Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Because I’m a prick who likes to make narrow decks that prey on the metagame in the MtGO casual room, here’s a deck designed exclusively to make the average Vampire player cry.

4 x Path to Exile
4 x Harm’s Way
4 x White Knight
4 x Knight of the White Orchid
4 x Devout Lightcaster
4 x Undead Slayer
4 x Baneslayer Angel

2 x Luminarch Ascension
1 x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 x Blazing Torch
1 x Day of Judgement

4 x Honor of the Pure

2 x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
21 x Plains

It’s all protection-from-black, first-strike, and black/vampire removal. Fun times.

G/B Rock in Zen Standard

NOTE: This post is undergoing various changes on the fly.

Here’s a sketch of a decklist for G/B rock in post-Zendikar extended.

4 Duress

4 Lotus Cobra
2 Doom Blade
4 Putrid Leech
2 Sign in Blood

4 Harrow
4 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Garruk Wildspeaker

4 Bordeland Ranger & 4 Ob Nixilis OR
4 Lord of Extinction & 4 Mind Shatter

4 Terramophic Expanse
4 G/B Fetch
8 Forest
8 Swamp

God draw:

Turn 1 Swamp, Duress, stripping removal
Turn 2 Forest, Lotus Cobra
Turn 3 G/B Sac (1m floating), crack Sac for Forest (2m floating), tap Swamp (3 floating), Harrow saccing tapped Swamp, fetching Swamp and Forest (2m floating, now 1 Swamp and 3 Forest available), tap two Forest (4 mana floating), Garruk, untap two lands. So four lands in play, all mana open, a Lotus Cobra and Garruk on the field.

Other possible cards:

Mind Rot
Sceptre of Fugue
Deathmark
Infest
Mind Shatter
Great Sable Stag

MTG DESIGN SPACE: MECHANICS

Based on feedback via Twitter, it appeared that the last Design Space article was a hit. So on to my second attempt at exploring design spaces in Magic the Gathering. This week, as requested over Twitter. I’ll be exploring mechanics. Feedback is always appreciated. You can either e-mail me or catch me on twitter.

I have to admit, new mechanics were a killer to talk about. Last week I included one in my discussion on counterspells. I’m going to explore that today, and also talk about two new mechanics.

1. Scavenge

The mechanic I added to Cancel last week is Scavenge.

Scavenge (Exile this card from your graveyard: Add 1 mana of any on of its colors to your mana pool.)

And here was the card.

I like this card as it gives utility after the card has been used. I’ve tried to limit any scavenge card to only adding one mana to the pool, regardless of how many colors it is.

I think Mana Gift above is a much more playable card than Cancel. It’s the type of card that you’d suddenly love to use Turn 3, knowing you’d get a boost into five mana Turn 4. That’s great in a colour like blue.

Here are three more cards using the mechanic Scavenge.

Blood Minion:

Blood Minion is a callout to the old Blood Pet. However you’ll get slightly more utility out of Blood Minion, with the ability to beat until it’s no longer needed, block when required, then get a boost the next turn.

Lingering Flame:

At instant speed Lingering Flame is simply too powerful. But as a Sorcery it seems just right. The 2 damage is fine considering Lightning Bolt is back, and the Scavenge ability allows for some emergency access to Lightning Bolt once tapped out.

Gaea’s Handmaiden:

Gaea’s Handmaiden was made to be a good Limited card. Green already has so many broken things it can do with mana that it doesn’t particularly need yet another path to go down. However, this card’s ability is perfect to help ramp, whether it’s on the battlefield or in the graveyard.

The threat to the mechanic is whether or not it is too potent in decks that abuse the graveyard, namely Dredge. I’m not sure whether Dredge particularly cares about the extra mana, as it is perfectly able to operate manaless. However, it is an interesting dilemma and would need to be tested.

2. Exhaust

The next mechanic I explored was something I called Exhaust. It started off in thinking about lands, and something different to the usual Comes-Into-Play lands. That let me to a different kind of drawback, and eventually this card, Tidal Lavafield:

Exhaust (At the beginning of your end step, tap this.)

I think it’s a very interesting way of giving a land a drawback. You get to use your mana, or lose your mana. A real boon for aggressive decks, not so great for control decks.

Exhaust does seem to be just made for aggression. Try these three cards:

Goblin Sprinter:

A classic aggro Goblin. Swing in quickly or any usefulness from the card. Great early game, terrible late game.

Work Auroch:

Work Auroch has probably overpowered stats and a big drawback, again the use-it-or-lose-it drawback. Incidentally I didn’t feel that Work Auroch deserved to have Trample, as it is supposed to be a more tamed version of the beast.

Fleeting Opportunity:

I really like this card. It’s absolutely useless on defence, but in a White Weenie deck could be very powerful. It’s simple, does one thing, and shows how Exhaust could be used on non-creature Permanents where tapping matters.

For the creatures, I guess the question is, “Why not just make them have ‘This creature cannot block’?”. I guess Exhaust also stops things like Arena and Contested Cliffs, which is a bigger drawback than the inability to drop. So I believe Exhaust is a bigger drawback than the ability to block.

3. Presence

The last mechanic is one I thought about while considering Chroma. I think Chroma is a terrible, terrible keyword, although the mechanic is kind-of okay. Presence doesn’t have the flexibility of Chroma, but it is still pretty powerful. Here’s the keyword:

Presence (This enters the battlefield with X counters on it, where X is the number of permanents you control.)

And here are a few ways of using it.

Krosan Ghostwalker:

This is probably the simplest way of using Presence – a straight */* for the number of counters on it.

Tectonic Ire:

Tectonic Ire comes at Presence from a different angle, allowing the spending of more mana to get some use out of the card. The first activation will usually be for 3 or 4 damage, which, for 4 mana, is not terrible. It’s the second activation will more than make it’s mana cost worthy, and the third activation fantastic.

Fragile Scrolls:

This adds a sacrifice effect to the use of the Presence counters and, in typical blue fashion, draws cards from it. Five mana is a lot to spend, but over two turns isn’t terrible, and will always net at least three cards. I’m guessing it would be horribly fantastic late game, possibly too good.

Blistering Plague:

I think I’ve got the mana cost far too low on this for too powerful effect. However, at it’s effectively a BBBB cost, I’m not sure. Early on it should always be a 2-for-1, later on much more than that. But probably too cheap.

The Aviary of Hoqas:

Probably my favourite Presence card, The Aviary of Hoqas allows you to spend counters for Bird tokens. You don’t even have to spend them all at once, but whenever you wish. As the Aviary doesn’t get sacrificed when you’ve used all the tokens, if you can find a way to get the more, then you’ll be getting more birdies. Yay.

I found tokens to be an extremely flexible way of getting effects, and it’s something I’ll certainly be exploring in the future.

–***—

So there are three new mechanics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on them, so be sure to comment on the post, or e-mail me or find me on twitter

And here’s a preview of next weeks article on Artifacts:

My love of Bloodchief Ascension currently knows no bounds. No doubt this will wear off once I discover it really belongs in the dollar-rare basket.

Meanwhile, here are two decks you may enjoy trialing. Both of them mean you can avoid slamming downs $100 on a set of Lotus Cobra.

Though Lotus Cobra would work well in the BBBB deck…

Balls-to-the-wall-Bloodchief

The intention of this deck is to simply get counters onto Bloodchief Ascension ASAP. Even without Ascension the deck is stupid fast and highly distruptive.

[16 x 1 Mana spells]

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 Goblin Guide
4 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Disfigure (could be Doomblade or Terminate)

[16 x 3 mana spells]

4 Blightning
4 Hideous End
4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Goblin Ruinblaster

[4 x X mana spells]

4 Earthquake

[20 land]

20 x LANDS

BBBB (Blood-Blast-Blighting-Broodmate)

An update of the Standard Jund Cascade deck, it looks to pushing card advantage into epic proportions. Cascade+Recurrence+Discard+Ascension=Win.

[12 x Blood spells]

4 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Bloodghast
4 Bloodbraid Elf

[8 x Blast spells]

4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Bituminous Blast

[8 x B-lightning spells]

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Blightning

[2 x Broodmate spells]

2 Broodmate Dragon

[6 x chaff spells]

2 Terminate
4 Putrid Leech

[24 lands]

24 x LANDS

In case you haven’t realised it, Bloodchief Ascension is the latest crazy-good card in Zendikar.

Here are the stats:

Bloodchief Ascension
B
Enchantment
At the beginning of each players end step, if an opponent lost 2 or more life this turn, you may put a quest counter on Bloodchief Ascension.
Whenever a card is put into an opponents graveyard from anywhere, if Bloodchief Ascension has three or more ascension counters on it, you may have that player lose 2 life. If you do, you gain 2 life.

Achieving ascension here is virtually the equivalent of winning the game. And it is very, very easy to achieve.

Here’s what I think will be a typical game in Zendikar.

Y-T1: Swamp, Bloodchief Ascension
O-T1: Forest, Birds of Paradise
Y-T2: Dragonskull Summit, pass.
o-T2: Sac Land, Lotus Cobra, crack Sac land. You Lightning Bolt opponent and Disfigure the Cobra. Fetch island, pass turn. 1 Counter. Opponent at 16.
Y-T3: Dragonskull Summit, pass.
o-T3: Forest, Some large creature. In response you Hideous End. Opponent at 14, 2 counters.
Y-T4: Mountain, Lightning Bolt the face. Pass turn. 3 counters, 11 life.
O-T4: Sac land, Lotus Cobra, crack Sac land… you Archive Trap. Opponent takes 26 life, you gain 26 life. GG.

And that’s just a random guess at the options. What about…

Y-T1: Swamp, Vampire Lacerator
0-T1: Sac Land, pass.
Y-T2: Dragonskull Summit, Bloodchief Ascension, attack for 2. 1 Counter. Pass. Opponent cracks Sac land for Forest. Opponent at 17
O-T2: Sac Land, pass. You lightning bolt to the dome. 2 counters. Opponent at 14.
Y-T3: Dragonskull Summit. Attack with Vampire Lacerator. Pass. 3 Counters.
O-T3: Opponent sacs land, takes 3 damage (1 from land, 2 from Bloodchief Ascension…), you gain two life, they play some big stupid dork.
O-T4: Dragonskull Summit. Blightning, Lightning Bolt.

GG indeed.

And that’s just scratching the surface. What about Duress? Thoughtseize? Burning Inquiry, of all things. Mind Shatter. In-sane.

Based on what’s been spoiled in Zendikar so far, blue is going to bite balls.

Here’s a concept deck you may enjoy playing just to make some blue mage’s day absofuckinglutely miserable.

Fuck You Blue [A Standard Deck Concept]

[16 Creatures]

4 x River Boa
4 x Great Sable Stag
4 x Spellbreaker Behemoth
4 x Terra Stomper

[8 Instants]

4 x Lightning Bolt
4 x Volcanic Fallout

[8 Sorceries]

4 x Rampant Growth
4 x Banefire

[4 Enchantments]

4 x Khalni Heart Expedition

[24 Lands]

4 x Rootbound Crag
4 x Kazandu Refuge
2 x Gargoyle Castle
9 x Forest
5 x Mountain

Why this sucks for blue:

* 20 uncounterable spells (12 creatures, 4 instants and 4 sorceries)
* 8 end of turn burn spells
* 4 low mana, islandwalking, regenerating creatures
* Plently of mana acceleration to outrace counterspells
* Uncounterable flyer in the form of Gargoyle Castle.

Dear blue, it sucks to be you.

MTG DESIGN SPACE: COUNTERSPELLS

I’m going to attempt to explore design spaces in Magic the Gathering once a week, starting with this attempt at exploring counterspells. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about counterspells in Magic the Gathering. Since the printing of the eponymous Counterspell – the classic “Counter target spell” for UU – Wizards has been trying to lower the power level of counterspells ever since.

It seems that a straight counterspell for UU is too strong. However, as demonstrated by the great decks of today, 1UU is too weak, with Cancel seeing little success in T1 decks.

At the same time, the highly flexible Cryptic Command, at 1UUU, was a format defining spell.

I thought today I’d explore the design space of the counterspell with five theoretical cards.

Here they are, in order of mana cost.

Audacious Gamble

Yes, it will remind you of Force of Will. However, unlike Force of Will, you will never be able to hard cast it, and it’s truly terrible as a top-deck card when your hand is empty.

However, unlike Force of Will, you can play it in a deck of any colour, as you need not exile a blue card. Also, unlike Force of Will, it would be quite advantageous in a deck using reanimation tactics or Madness keyworded spells.

Aether Spurt [note: name changed]

There’s a slot between Nix and Spell Snare that’s not yet been filled. This spell is designed for that slot. Unlike Nix, it doesn’t hit Affinity or alternately costed cards. And unlike Force Spike, although you’ll often be countering a first-turn spell with this, your mileage will vary late game.

The upside is that it will hit Moxen and Rituals, making it perfect to slow down degenerate combo decks from going off turn 1.

Tidal Denial

A little bit Gush, a little bit Counterspell. Tidal Denial may be heavily frowned up as taking up too much tempo in the early game, but you don’t lose card advantage and may even get extra triggers from the soon-to-be-released Land Fall mechanic.

At the same time, this is a great spell for lategame use, where bouncing an island is often irrelevant to the game state.

If Cancel is out of favour, what incentives does a player need to pay the same cost? These next two cards explore that.

Mana Gift

Mana Gift demonstrates an invented keyword, Scavenge. If you knew you’d get extra mileage out of Cancel by boosting your mana pool on the next turn (or even the same turn), would you use it? It’s a callout to mana drain without being nearly as degenerate in power. The extra mana could even be used to power out another counterspell.

Scorn

Another attempt at making Cancel attractive. Would you play Cancel if you could kick it into a pseudo Cryptic Command? I like the tension that Scorn provides in the early game – spend the card and play it as Cancel, or hold it back and get a Cryptic.

I think there’s a lot of room to maneuver when it comes to counterspells. Lately Wizards has been printing a lot of ‘conditional’ counterspells – Essence Scatter, Negate, Flashfreeze. I’d really like to see some great counterspells back in Standard, and think Wizards has plenty of design space left in this regard.

Today’s spells artwork is stolen from Redlabor.com. Go take a look at their great work.

Looking at MtG Spoilers and dreaming of new archetypes is always appealing. Here are some early thoughts on what we might see in the future. Decks are based on spoilers noted at MtG Salvation Zendikar Spoiler site

STANDARD – UNENDING ASSULT

The deck aims to consistently overwhelming your opponent through both creature mass and recursion of the best creature in the game. It’s ability to clear the board and return Baneslayer Angel the same turn makes it brutal to play against.

4 WHITE 1 MANA CREATURE [Elite Vanguard? Akrasan Squire?]
4 WHITE 1 MANA CREATURE
4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 WHITE LANDFALL CREATURE [YET TO BE SPOILED]
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Baneslayer Angel

4 Path to Exile
4 Harm’s Way

4 Day of Judgement

4 Emeria, The Sky Ruin
20 Plains

EXTENDED – ARCHMAGE CONTROL SKELETON [Possibly Storm?]

This is a framework for getting the most out of Archmage Ascension. It helps you either find Ascension or find your win conditions while delaying your opponent. It may fit a Storm framework well, although the only Storm left in Extended is Dragonstorm, and I’m not sure if Archmage Ascension is too slow in that deck.

Archmage Ascension seems totally broken in Classic at the moment, and I would expect it to see some play as a first-turn trump card (Swamp -> Dark Ritual -> Manamorphose -> Archmage Ascension seems a pretty strong opener, especially as you plan to draw cards the next few turns anyway).

4 Archmage Ascension
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Ponder / Sleight of Hand
4 Peer Through Depths/Telling Time

4 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
4 Electrolyze/Manamorphose/Mass Removal/Etc

4 WIN CONDITION
4 WIN CONDITION

Lands as needed

CLASSIC – GOBLIN SLIGH

This deck uses some light removal to clear the way for a certain Instigator or Lackey hit. With either of those and/or the Aether Vial on the board you don’t really need any mana to cast goblins, so using Mountains to shoot Fireblasts seems a sensible way of casting more free spells.

4 Goblin Lackey
4 Warren Instigator
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Matron
2 Goblin Chieftain
4 SINGLETON GOBLINS [Sharpshooters, Siege Gangs, Tin-Street Hooligan, etc]

4 Aether Vial
2 Lotus Petal

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fireblast

4 Wasteland
16 Mountain [though likely splashing green for sideboard purposes]

Building Dragonstorm in 2010

Ok, I’ll admit it up front; I love me some Storm decks. I love the ridiculous nature of playing a one-sided game of Magic that is entirely unfair for your opponent, whose sole interaction is to hope they get away with whatever they’re trying to achieve before they die.

With Tendrils of Agony and Brain Freeze rotating out of Extended, Dragonstorm will be the immediate go-to card of Storm lovers. As such I think it’s important to look at three Storm Decks of yore.

* Mihara’s Dragonstorm Deck of 2006
* Gabriel Nassif, Mark Herberholz, and Patrick Chapin’s Mono-R Dragonstorm of 2007
* Luis Scott-Vargas’s Grand Prix Los Angeles TEPS of 2009

And here they are (sideboards excluded):

Mihara’s Dragonstorm Deck of 2006

4 Bogardan Hellkite
2 Hunted Dragon
4 Dragonstorm
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song

4 Remand
4 Gigadrowse
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Telling Time

4 Lotus Bloom

1 Dreadship Reef
1 Calciform Pools
4 Shivan Reef
4 Steam Vents
8 Island
4 Mountain

Gabriel Nassif, Mark Herberholz, and Patrick Chapin’s Mono-R Dragonstorm of 2007

4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Dragonstorm
4 Rite of Flame
4 Shock
4 Rift Bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Grapeshot
4 Pyromancer’s Swath

4 Lotus Bloom

4 Molten Slagheap
4 Fungal Reaches
4 Spinerock Knoll
12 Snow-covered Mountain

Luis Scott-Vargas’s Grand Prix Los Angeles TEPS of 2009

4 Desperate Ritual
2 Electrolyze
4 Manamorphose
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Remand
4 Seething Song
4 Mind’s Desire [no longer be in Extended post rotation]
4 Ponder
4 Rite of Flame
2 Sleight of Hand
2 Tendrils of Agony [no longer be in Extended post rotation]

4 Lotus Bloom

3 Cascade Bluffs
4 Dreadship Reef
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Steam Vents

Using this information, I’m going to build the framework of a core Dragonstorm deck.

Firstly, there are only a handful of cards that all three decks have in common.

Lotus Bloom [12]
Rite of Flame [12]
Bogardan Hellkite [12]
Dragonstorm [12]

Considering that Dragonstorm is a nine-mana card I find it amazing that the 2007 Mono-R deck had no other mana acceleration. Here are the other mana accelerants the 2006 and 2009 decks played:

Seething Song [8]
Desperate Ritual [8]

Storage Lands

Dreadship Reef [6]
Molten Slagheap [4]
Fungal Reaches [4]
Calciform Pools [1]

Here are the various straight burn/removal spells the decks played

Shock [4]
Rift Bolt [4]
Incinerate [4]
Grapeshot [4]
Electrolyze [2]
Pyromancer’s Swath [4]

Tutors / Search

Sleight of Hand [6]
Telling Time [4]
Peer Through Depths [4]
Ponder [4]

Control Elements

Remand [8]
Gigadrowse [4]

Storm Count Enablers

Manamorphose [4]
Spinerock Knoll [4]

The main question when looking at Dragonstorm in 2009/10 is whether to go R/U, R/B or mono-R. After considering the benefits of going multi-coloured and mono-coloured, I believe mono-coloured has the slight edge in speed and flexibility. It also allows the deck to run a very sweet set of sideboard cards. Here’s my suggested deck.

2010 DETERMINEDLY-RED EXTENDED DRAGONSTORM [DRED] by Neale Talbot

MAIN DECK

[6 Creatures]

4 Bogardan Hellkite
2 Knollspine Dragon

[16 Sorceries]

4 Dragonstorm
4 Grapeshot
4 Rift Bolt
4 Rite of Flame

[12 Instants]

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shock
4 Seething Song

[4 Enchantments]

4 Pyromancer’s Swath

[4 Artifacts]

4 Lotus Bloom

[18 Lands]

4 Fungal Reaches
4 Molten Slagheap
4 Spinerock Knoll
6 Snow-Covered Mountain

SIDEBOARD

4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Ancient Grudge
4 Blood Moon
3 Skred

The two biggest additions to the suite are Lightning Bolt and Knollspine Dragon.

* Lightning Bolt is a straight upgrade of Incinerate. Pyromancer’s Swatch turns Lightning Bolt into a 1 mana instant Lava Axe. It is truly an unfair card.
* Knollspine Dragon is the tech you heard here first. It’s the card drawing game finisher this type of deck is begging for. Hidden under a Spinerock Knoll, or brought in using the last of the Dragonstorm, Knollspine Dragon will bring in at least 5-7 cards. This can be critical if you can only storm for 3. Bringing in two Hellkites and a single Knollspine will net you a full hand, which is simply insane in this deck.

The current struggle I have is whether Shock, Incinerate or Desperate Ritual are better in that slot. Shock certainly works better with Pyromancer’s Swath, building storm count and triggering the Spinerock Knoll, which is simply an unfair card in this deck with either a Dragonstorm or a Knollspine Dragon underneath it. However the 18 lands puts extra pressure on having the Desperate Rituals around.

The sideboard tech is simple.

* Ancient Grudge is a nod to Chalice of the Void and Affinity.
* Volcanic Fallout is to deal with those pesky elves, faeries and token decks.
* Blood Moon is an all-round star in making the day of almost any extended deck other than RDW miserable.
* Skred is for extra removal, and is probably the weakest sideboard card. Magus of the Moon might be the better card.

And there you have it, DRED, now with more Lightning Bolts and Knollspine Dragons. Let me know what you think either on Twitter or in the comments.