Absense of Allies

Following on from my last post, and more pertinantly,  now that Worldwake has been released it is time to consider what role I want subthemes to play in my cube. As previously stated, the goal for my cube is to duplicate the feel of extended limited, without it being a ultra high powered collection.

As I look to add cards from Worldwake, it appears to me that in order to make room for new cards, Allies have to be omitted – the same would be true with slivers were they around in the selected blocks. Here is my reasoning.

Ally cards are cumulative in their effects. Simply put Allies get better the more of them there are. They also come in all five colours meaning that as there are 5 allies per colour that is 10% of the total coloured slots that have to be devoted to allies.

Obviously this is not practicle. One alternative is to allow allies in only two or three colours. But which colours? Is it worth devoting 15 slots for them instead of 25? In the end I reasoned that it was better to leave them out rather than compromise the drafting experience of the players.

Cube Thoughts

For better or worse the bulk of the cube has been fleshed out. I never quite realised how dificult it would be to put together a “super-set” of magic cards. I will have to play with the cube a few times to get a feel of what works best but at this stage I am pretty happy with my first attempt.

When you sit down and design a cube you are in effect taking the role of a designer – playing God if you will.  You get to decide what cards go into your cube, what architypes will be represented, and how the cube will feel as it is played. I know this insight is not new – but without this concept being front and center your cube will only be a stack of cards.

With that in mind, I have come up with the following objectives

• I want my cube to feel like you are playing sealed deck.
• Each color will have a few bombs but not too many that the cube becomes all bombs
• The cube must have a number of architypes available to the drafters
• All colours must be playable.
• Alternate win conditions must exist

Having played a few games with the cube, certain things come to mind.

• The blades are sub par in this environment
• Care must be taken with the ratio of 2 or 3 coloured mana costs on cards
• You can not feature all architypes in the cube

The last point is best shown by the comparison of allies v’s exalted. Exalted cards are useful even when they are in decks alone. Allies on the otherhand are very limited unless a deck commits to them more heavily. Perhaps there is scope for a 3 colour ally architype instead – obviously this needs more investigation.

Worldwake Prerelease 2010

Well the big day has been and gone – I am sitting down looking over the souvaneers I have of the day. I had a blast despite coming out on the wrong side of a 2-3 match tally. There are some amazing new cards to play around with in this set.

First, here is the deck I registered:

Worldwake Pre-release Deck 1

Format: Zendikar Block Limited
Colours: Black | Blue | Red

Notes:

Decklist:

Nothing too stellar but a serviceable deck none the less. It just seemed to lack the ability to deal with big threats. The ultimate highlight was slipping through the final 5 points of unblockable damage with a Hammer of Ruin equipped Creeping Tar Pit while facing at least 26 points of incomming damage the following turn.

The second deck I played in the two games was:

Worldwake Pre-release Deck 2

Format: Zendikar Block Limited
Colours: Black | White

Notes:

Decklist:

By bringing in the white I felt that I ended up with a more consistant deck, despite losing a close game to a 21/21 Scute Mob.

I’ve started building a cube!

Yes folks – it’s true!

I have sucumbed to the urge to build me a cube. Now it’s not very exciting a cube yet, but give it time. The idea behind the cube is to construct an extended cube, starting with Shards of Alara block. So right now it is only has cards that are from Shards, Conflux, Reborn, M10 and Zendikar.

Check out the cube page.

Vedos the Vengeful – V1.02

Vedos the Vengeful – V1.02

Format:60 Card Highlander
Colours: Black | Blue | Red

Notes:Newest version of Vedos – Crosis is back!

Decklist:

Sarkhan Vol’s Dragons V1.01

Sarkhan Vol’s Dragons V1.01

Format: Default Archetype
Colours: Black | Green | Red

Notes: A standard only build limited to M10 and Alara block.
Creatures of note: Dragons and more Dragons and featuring Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund.

Decklist:

Mayael the Anima

Mayael the Anima

Format: Standard – ALA-ZEN
Colours: White | Green | Red

Notes:Standard Naya 60 card highlander deck list

Decklist:

Pauper Deck I will be piloting this week

Sanctified

Format: Pauper – Standard – ALA-ZEN
Colours: Black | Blue | White

Notes:

Decklist:

MTGO – Crosis V1.06

MTGO – Crosis V1.06

Format: Elder Dragon Highlander
Colours: Black | Blue | Red

Notes: Crosis EDH Decklist

Decklist:

Angelic Ascension on MTGO – Two variants

Angelic Ascension – MTGO – Version 1

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Black | Blue | White

Notes:

Decklist:

Angelic Ascension – MTGO – Version 2

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Black | Blue | White

Notes:

Decklist:

Vedos the Vengeful – V1.01

Vedos the Vengeful – V1.01

Format: 60 Card Highlander
Colours: Black | Blue | Red – Black | Blue | White

Notes: One of my longest serving decks, this has been about since the Mercadian Masques expansion. It started out as a 3 colour BUR deck, and expanded to 5 colours after the advent of Invasion.

In this invocation it has reverted back to it’s base roots or BUR with an 18 card transitional sideboard that swaps the red for white.

Recent changes are Hypnotic Specter, Whispers of the Muse and Crypt Angel added in place of Sign in blood, Keening Banschee and Vampire Hexmage.

Decklist:

Angelic Ascension

Angelic Ascension

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Black | Blue | White

Notes:
Featuring three Zendikar Ascensions this enchantment heavy deck seeks to stay alive long enough to triumph either through opponent life loss of Angelic beatdown.

Thanks to Erik from MTGO for the origional deck list.

Decklist:

Standard Fish

Merfolk 2010

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Blue

Notes:

My first take at a Merfolk deck in standard. Given that the Elf Lord has been spoiled I am hoping that there may be a Merfolk Lord forthcoming as well.  Trying to create a control oriented weenie rush deck.

Decklist:

Crosis EDH – MtGO

Crosis EDH – MTGO

Format: Elder Dragon Highlander
Colours: Black | Blue | Red
General: Crosis, the Purger

Notes:
Crosis has been a long standing deck of mine, starting all the way back in 1998. Origionally it was a BUR control deck, featuring a number of obscure cards. With the advent of Invasion and cracking open one Crosis, the Purger the deck had finally found its figurehead. Bored one evening I decided to get what ever cards I could and take Crosis online. I balked at buying the origional dual lands and the Ravnica duals, alowing my budget to stretch to a set of good old fashoned pain lands.

Crosis had always been a dueling 60 card deck so when I discovered the EDH format I attempted to upgrade the deck to EDH standards. As a general, I don’t find him that compelling. There are not that many alternatives, so I am stuck with him for now.

Decklist:

New Deck – World Queller Control

From the lab of Mr Zetetic – Mad Scientist.

World Queller Control

Format: Standard Decks

Colours: White

Decklist:

Stumbled across the World Queller and thought that there was a possibility to build a deck around it. It’s not a great concept – definitely not a tier one deck, but it has promise in our fun circle. It wins in two of different ways – either it gets the semi soft lock of Emiria, World Queller and Kor Cartographer going allowing you to blow up all the world, or you get a horde +1/+1 indestructible Angels and flying Kor Soldiers and beat your opponent to death with them.

One card of interest is the Terramorphic Expanse. This serves as a late game deck thinner – you need seven plains to turn on Emeria, but once you have five mana in play you don’t mind that the other lands come into play tapped.

The Knight of the White Orchid and Kor Cartographer are in the deck to power it through to seven plains to turn on the Emeria effect. Kor Skyfisher is a great card – it fills the role of reset button, allowing you to bounce Kor Cartographers, Knight of the White Orchid, or even Oblivion Ring before a Day of Judgement.

I haven’t played enough games to figure out what spells are more important than others, hence the collection  of threes in the other spells section.  I expect these will change once I get a feel as to the weakness of the deck.

Not a great day for Jund

Took my latest Jund creation to King of Cards for a FNM event yesterday. I was hoping to build on my 3-1-1 from my last outing. Sadly that was not to be.

Here is the list that I was piloting:

Jund Agro – 21-11-2009

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Black | Green | Red

Decklist:

The biggest problem the deck had was trying to do too much in different directions. Vampire Night hawk and Great Sable Stag can not both be in the deck – BB1 and GG1, while potentially possible, seldom come together from 3 mana sources. There were times where I had Great Sable Stag and Vampire Nighthawk in hand, with BRG in play. I do have some ideas on changes that I want to make to the composition, howeveTournament Reportr.

I am a little concerned for Jund being viable following the Worlds finals and the advent of Naya Light Sabre. From what I can see, Light Sabre can handle Jund but more importantly the rest of the field to boot.  I expect to see a large number of copy cat decks coming out and attacking the dominance of Jund – Is there a deck that can then step into the void and take advantage of this meta game transition.

Back in the saddle again

Well I have taken the plunge and started playing competitive constructed Magic again – after a break of almost 9 years.

My first hit outsaw me piloting a net deck build of Jund Agro in standard. First time playing the deck and I must confess to being happy with the result! I went 3-1-1, before being knocked out in the top 8 by another Jund deck piloted by a seasoned veteran!

Jund Agro – 07-11-2009

Format: Standard Decks
Colours: Green | Red | Black

Notes: Played FNM King of Cards

Record 3-1-1
Lost in Quaters

Decklist:

I must admit that I do like Jund as a deck – sure it is boring – and somewhat predictable – but it has dragons!!!!  I love them dragons!!! Besiudes, most constructed decks have limited numbers of individual cards available.

My mana base was a little loose due to the lack of some of the cards needed. I am taking steps to resolve this limitation for the future.

After piloting the deck through the event, I have begun to adjust it slightly – I have taken out the planeswalkers and Putrid Leeches, adding Great Sable Stags and my super secret tech, Vampire Nighthawk. I like Vampire Nighthawk – life gain, death touck and flying evasion in a 3 toughness package is pretty cool.

I will be updating my twitter feed with the results – now that I can do so via mobile phone text messages! Stay tuned for the updates!

Zendikar standard for multi-player

Zendikar has been sitting in my hot little hands for a couple of weeks now. Finally I broke down and disbanded all of my decks and created some brand new concoctions. The one criteria is that they are designed for multi-player with my new playgroup. Very quickly I have discovered that duel focused decks do not cut it. I have also noticed that my decks tend to lack the killer edge needed to thrive in this savage environment.

First I made a list of concepts that I wanted to explore. These were, in no particular order:

• G/x  – landfall agro
• W/r – Kor Soldiers
• R/G/w – Ally agro
• U/B – Control (Zombie Discard??)
• W/g/u – Bant Agro
• R/G/w – Naya fat matters!
• B – Sorin vampires
• B/U/R – Grixis control
• U/B/w – Esper Agro

Not bad for a start – now there are limitations:

1. I have to build the decks from the cards I have which means that there will be some suboptimal cards in the list
2. The decks have to be able to hold their own in multi-player.
3. They must have some odd cards in them – cards that make players have to reach over and read the text.
4. Must have a planeswalker (where possible) in each deck that fits the theme of the deck.
5. Where possible the deck must have some legendary creatures.
6. Decks must be fun to play

Ok. So those are the ground rules. Lets see what mayhem I can come up with!

Zendikar – My first look

Well the pre-release has been and gone. What a hoot! I had an absolute blast. Went 4-1 and finished 4th in my flight.

Sadly I didn’t think to record my card pool or my deck – the brain was a tad fried after the long day.  I played a Grb stompin deck with fatties, allies and some red/black removal goodness.

MVP: Terra Stomper – this guy rocked, and I won every game that he hit the table! 8/8 for 6 is a beast.

Honourable Mention: Disfigure - B for a -2/-2 is pretty cool – opening 2 in the pool was awesome!

Honourable Mention: Vines of the Vastwood – G for Shroud and GG for +4/+4 and shroud. Simply amazing. G for counter target spell or activated ability targeting any creature – unreal!

The mechanics of Landfall, Allies, and Kicker are pretty neat too. Not sure about traps though. I have never found a trap that I preferred over a non trap card. The quests are good too.

All up I give Zendikar a 9/10 for a fun environment.

Myth of Mythic proportions

I’d just like to highlight the fact that mythic rares are actually no more rare than a tempest rare, or mirage or any other large set. Where things have changed is that gold rares in a set like alara, M2010 and Zendikar are in face less rare. My argument is based on the following.

A standard sheet of magic cards is 121 cards.  Based on the stats for shards of alara there are 53 gold rares and 15 mythic rares. When you do the math 53 + 53 = 106 + 15 = 121.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. Basically you have the same chance of opening any one of the mythic rares that you had opening one of the normal rares in the older blocks.

What has changed is the gold rares are actually less rare, and you have a higher chance of opening one of the new fetch lands than you did opening the old ones by a factor of 2. You also don’t get as many “filler” rares in the set, which means more goodness.