Card Advantage Presents: Pack Wars - Episode 4

So we finally bought our Origins fat pack, which means that this week's pack war comes with a bit of an unboxing video as well, and a little bit extra at the end. Check it out!

So the pack war probably would have been more interesting for me if I'd gotten a red source earlier in the game, but as it stands, it was pretty fun. Origins being a pretty flat powered set makes for "fair" pack wars, unless someone gets a prickleboar down or something.

Please join us next week when we'll be cracking an extra special pair of packs for our pack war, and don't forget to check our our Draft this Friday!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

MDSS Team Sealed Report - August 10, 2015

Tams and I finally went to our first large tournament, along with our good friend John-as-always of The Mana Leek fame. The reason we needed to invite a third player? It was team sealed!

Mana Deprived puts on their "Super Series" every year, and part of that this year was a Team Sealed event. If you've never done a team event, I want to convince you to give it a try. It was one of the most rewarding magic experiences I've ever had.

To start with, you get twelve packs for a team sealed event, and you have to build three decks for your team to use. For a more in depth discussion on team sealed, check out the Limited Resources archive episode 245. For now, check out this video where I go over the sealed pool and breakdown of the three decks.

I was piloting the green black deck, and in the first round I had a very abrupt awakening. I was well on my way to a 2 game victory when I heard that, due to a mixture of deck tempo and mana issues, my teammates had lost. I still finished the game, but my victory was a bit hollow since I knew it count for anything.

In the fourth round, however, the tables were turned. I lost quickly and was able to advise my teammates during their games.

One thing I absolutely love about team limited is that you get to share full information with your teammates. Everything from deck construction to side boarding, right up to mulligan decisions you get a second, and even third opinion on. Of course, you have to trust your team. It helps to find people who share your mentality, which Tams, John, and I do.

Our final record was 4-2, which put us in 9th place and unfortunately just out of prizes, but it was still well worth the price of entry, and I'd do it again in a heart beat. If you ever have a chance to check one out, you should. Just find a couple of friends, and go. The worst that could happen is adventure!

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Card Advantage Presents: Pack Wars - Episode 3

Hey everybody,

I know this is usually draft day, but with the problems I've been having with our processing computer, our ability to draft is temporarily hampered, and since we're going to a team sealed event with John-as-always of The Mana Leek this weekend, I decided to just slide the pack war into the Friday release slot.

We should have a post tournament report for when we're back from the event in Toronto, but for now, please enjoy this, our pack war for Modern Masters 2015.

It wasn't as fun as the original Modern Masters, but it was still interesting. I feel like domain cards would have been fairly good in this format, but so would all the artifacts. As it turns out, a set with a lot of synergies is not that great to pack war with, because the synergies are very hard to set up in a single pack.

Regardless, we hope you've enjoyed this, and we'll be back with another Origins pack war, as well as a draft, next week.

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Introduction to Pack Wars Triple Bill

Hey everybody,

Tams and I have decided that there just isn't enough Card Advantage in the average week. In order to bring you more regular content, we've got some things in the works, the first of which is about to hit you in the eyes!

When we come home from FNM, pockets brimming with fresh boosters, we generally do a pack war, and we've decided to share this experience with all of you! Check out the hillarity below.

We've been meaning to start this series for a couple of weeks now, and since we have no intention of waiting while we run through our back log, I decided to not only make the first episode a double, we're also putting out our first pack war with Origins as well. Enjoy!

So that was our Pack Wars triple bill. We'll be putting out a new pack war every Tuesday. If you're interested in seeing a quirky take on Magic: the Gathering, please join us!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Origins Online Pre-Release

Be. Aggressive. Be-ee Aggressive!

Hey everyone! Welcome to MTG Origins online prerelease! We've got a pretty fun batch of matches lined up for you today. Why don't you go ahead and check it out?

Since Tams and I chose to run our favourite colours at the paper pre-release (Black and Green, respectively), we decided to take a different colour for our online sealed, and since white is part of two good archetypes (so far) in Origins (namely r/w aggro and g/w midrange), we thought white would be best.

As it turned out, those were exactly the two decks we ended up deciding between, and red just seemed too much fun to pass up. If you can be aggressive in sealed without sacrificing the long game, it's worth doing, and with a Sentinel of the Eternal Watch at our top end, we weren't sacrificing anything by running all of our efficient two drops.

Our flat out removal was a little light, as we didn't have a single good burn spell, but two Suppression Bonds were good enough to see us through, and a sideboard Act of Treason worked in one game to good effect.

All in all, we were quite happy with our deck and our play, even in the games we lost we played well, and we're looking forward to being able to bring you a draft this Friday!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Magic: Origins Pre-release info

Happy Wednesday everyone,

I know this entry is a tad late, but we've finally got our pre-release video up from Origins. Tams and I had a lot of fun, and I think we both explain our pools and our decisions fairly well. Go ahead and have a look!

Also, I know that we should have announced this here, rather than just putting the video up, but we've started a new series with Origins. People have asked us when we're going to start doing set reviews, and while we may think about that in future, we decided that there was something much more valuable to offer those uf us who enjoy limited Magic.

Card Advantage: On the Stack is a series we designed to get you ready for battle. In this video we review only the instant speed effects of a set in order to remind us all what the opponent could have in hand to affect our main phases, and combat on their turn, or on ours. We thought this could be the most valuable contribution we could make to our viewers pre-releases, and also upcoming drafts. If you haven't already, I suggest you check it out as more information is always a good thing.

Thanks for reading,


-Step.

Draft #51 - "Mirrodin Masters" - June 26, 2015

Full disclosure: Tams and I had no experience going into this set, and the only cards we knew going into it were the "best stuff", the ones which got reprinted in other sets, so we weren't expecting too much success. That having been said, it was a lot of fun to see these things in their original context.

I've always enjoyed the flavour of Mirrodin as a plane, and seeing as we're not likely to go back there any time soon, it was nice to have a chance to see the cards in action.

We fell into the trap of trying to stay in one colour, which is generally pretty good, but after seeing how the set interacted, we realized we should have splashed a few more powerful off colour cards.

Round one was really short, but it was long enough to notice several drafting errors on our part. We should have taken more equipment if that was our plan, and stayed away from situational cards which looked good on the surface. We had a lot of creatures which needed equipment and not enough equipment to go around. There may also have been an entirely situational card in our main board, which we should have noticed during deckbuilding.

In rounds two and three we began to see more of what our deck should have been trying to do. The games were entertaining and informative, and if we ever draft Mirrodin block again, we should have a better idea of what we're in for.

In the mean time, I will mention that this Draft is going up a day early this week to make room for our special release coming tomorrow. Stay tuned for a big surprise!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Draft #50 "Dragons or not" - June 19, 2015

It's late in the format, and we've been through a lot of Dragons of Tarkir, so we felt it was time to try something a little kookie. Alas, best laid plans often do not work out, and what started as a kookie draft quickly turned into something else. Did we make the right decisions? You be the judge.

So it should be pretty clear that we abandoned our stipulation when the second dragon came along, but to be fair, that wasn't until the middle of pack three. It wouldn't have been much of a dragon deck with only two dragons.

What we ended up with was basically a draft that went off the rails. It should be a testament to the strength of red/black in this set that we still managed to go 2-1. Besides the fact that we first picked a situational dud, there just wasn't really much in the first pack. If we'd been drafting normally, we probably could have had a fairly decent blue/black deck (watch the draft to see what I mean), but we weren't giving up on much.

The games were short and entertaining, but not particularly notable.

Truth be told, the format is just getting stale for us, and we'll likely be doing more Modern Masters for the next few weeks. We may even head back to Theros for a quick visit. If any of you out there have any suggestions, feel free to comment. Shoot us a tweet or post on Facebook, and we'd love to try something kookie. In the mean time, we'll keep plugging on.

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Draft #49 "Messing With Modern" - June 12, 2015

Hey Everyone,

We're back to the drafting table after an unscheduled hiatus, and ready to try our hand at the latest supplementary product, Modern Masters 2015. Let's see how we did!

Since we couldn't make it to GP Vegas, we decided we at least wanted to draft Modern Masters 2015 once before it left MTGO. I honestly would have preferred to show you the sealed deck that we made while preparing for this draft, as it was a much better deck, but the one we put together here wasn't bad. Our curve was good, and we had lots of options for sideboarding. Running Elesh Norn was probably a mistake, and we knew that at the time. If I'd gotten to first pick Elesh Norn, I would have gone white/green, and tried to pick up as many token producers as I could. In our deck, she was basically flood insurance.

In the first game we didn't really know what we were doing, especially when we kept a bad hand. Five land and no action with our deck was bad, and we should have know it. Besides that, I think the deck would have mulliganed fairly well, so we should have given the deck another chance.

Game two really looked like we were in better shape, until we ran into a bunch of removal. I'd also like to say something about our opponent's deck. I hadn't thought about the synergy between Graft and Proliferate, but in hindsight, it looked like a potent combo. I'd like to try Sultai in this format if I get the chance.

In the other round we actually got to play, we were up against the Spirit deck, and that could have been a lot more trouble than it actually ended up. It was nice to see Elesh Norn make an appearance to win us the final game, but ultimately, this wasn't the deck for her, and we should have known that.

While one round was a bye, this was still technically a 2-1, which means we got our entry fee back, so there may be another one of these in the future. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Thanks for Watching,


-Step.

Modern Masters 2015 paper draft report - June 12, 2015

Tams and I recently went to a MM2 draft at The Gamer's Emporium, and it was a lot of fun. I didn't open anything of great value (though there was a Tarmogoyf, a Kiki-Jiki, an Ulamog, and a foil Vendilion Clique opened at the table), but the deck I put together was really fun to play. Take a look.

My first pick was a Sunlance, as my rare was of little value. I figured that good removal which fits into at least three decks was pretty solid. Artifacts were being passed to me in great number, and I thought I could get away with affinity. Once I got my second court homunculus and a frogmite almost last pick of pack one, I knew I was correct. As it turned out, someone else at the table was also drafting affinity, but they prioritized blue cards while I snapped up all the good artifacts. Throw in a couple of Narcolepsys and a Arrest, and my deck was a force to be reckoned with.

The one outlier of my deck was the Hearthfire Hobgoblin, but when the Izzet Boilerworks wheeled the table, I decided to include both.

I wasn't sure whether muldrifter, as a five drop, or Qumulox, as an eight drop would be castable with only 16 land in my deck, but as it turned out, I was generally able to play both by the time they ended up in my hand. At one point I cast both in the same turn, which felt fantastic.

Although I tried to draft fairly tight to my archetype, I did end up with a few off colour cards which I thought about playing.

Agony Warp might have been worth splashing for, and I'd considered splashing black for Duskhunter Bat, Vampire Lacerator, and Sign in Blood. I thought about running Electrolyze, since I was already in blue with red fixing, but at the end of the day consistency won out.

I also had a number of artifacts which I decided to leave out, and that decision was a bit more difficult.

Leaving out the Skyreach Mantas was easier after I decided not to splash, as a 3/3 flyer for 5 just wasn't as good as the other things I had going, and ramping off the Cathodion seemed unnecessary since I intended to dump my hand, and extra mana would just go to waste, but I wasn't sure whether a 1/1 for 1 which left behind an artifact was good enough. It would have worked well with Myrsmith, but in the end I decided that triple Court homunculus and a copper carapace were enough one drops, and the rest of my deck was better.

I ended up going 2-1, losing in the finals to some green jank, but I'm satisfied with my play, and the draft was really fun. I'd suggest you give this format a try. Also, look forward this Friday to our online Modern Masters draft, where hopefully we'll open a foil Tarmagoyf and never have to pay for a draft again.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

FNM Paper Draft Report - May 15, 2015

Something I've been hoping for for a while now finally happened, and I think it's all the better for having happened later in the drafting process. I opened a Sarkan Unbroken. I've wanted to draft around him in Dragons since I saw him, but I think if I'd had him pack one, he would have likely skewed my draft in an unfavourable direction. As it stands, I was already solidly U/G when I opened him, and picking up a couple of pieces of fixing was easy.

The main deck was actually built around an entirely different rare, obscuring aether. It came to me midway through the first pack when I'd already chosen several blue morphs, and I decided to go all in.

There are a good many playable morphs in green, and adding the chance of having a blue one, my opponent never knew what I was going to flip up. On top of that, I always seemed to have something to do with my mana. I even got to use Obscuring Aether as a surprise blocker in one game, because my opponent forgot about it.

The draft was kind to me in other ways. Sometimes you're right in

the right colours that noone else at the table is drafting. In this case, no one was in blue/green. I got passed Yasova Dragonclaw, and Shorecrasher Elemental, both of which made fine additions to the deck. I've played with Yasova before, and the fact that you can repeatably steal one of their better creatures is a great boon.

I'd never played with Shorecrasher Elemental before, but  I was pretty sure it would be a bomb. It's not quite an Aetherling, but it does a good impression of one, and it worked super well in my morph deck.

The real star of my deck was a bit unexpected. I had two Salt Road Ambushers, and they worked with the Obscuring Aether quite well. The fact that I got to put my morphs down a turn early, and then when I started flipping them up, they got two extra counters, meant I was well ahead of the other guy. 

One more auto-include was the Battlefront Krushok. With megamorph putting counters on all my creatures, the krushok made it impossible for my opponent to double block. Throw in a pair of Whisperer of the Wilds, and I ended up dropping a whisperer on turn two, two morphs on turn three, flipping up Ambushers by turn four, and turn five either dropping a Krushok or flipping up another morph, I had made an overwhelming board state before my opponent could do much to stop me.

Now, a word on Sarkhan Unbroken. He's a fine planeswalker, even without his ultimate ability. Most of the time I cast him, he ended up reading "Put a dragon into play, then next turn put another dragon into play", which is fine for five mana. The real advantage of any planeswalker is making your opponent nervous. Twice I got to create a dragon and then just let Sarkhan die, which was the equivalent of gaining three to seven life. It was good, but I wouldn't have tried too hard to include him if the deck hadn't supported him so well already.

Here's a look at the whole deck.

In the end I went 3-1, which was perfectly acceptable considering I lost in the finals to a red/black deck, and even that was in three games. Another fun week of drafting behind me, I can't wait to see what next week brings.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Draft #48 "The Elusive Rare Draft" - May 15, 2015

It's time for the Dragons of Tarkir rare draft! The only problem is that these rares are so rare, they're downright camera shy!

So you might notice that the video is a little short this week. We've been plagued by recording issues and hardware failures recently, and this draft is no different. After the client crashed twice, I decided that playing the games was more important than recording the video. All I managed to record was the draft.

I don't know whether this is common knowledge or not, but here's something you may not know about MTGO. When you don't submit your deck in time for the rounds to start, MTGO automatically puts all your cards, as well as enough land to play them, into the deck. This results in an 81 card deck, which you'll be given automatically for the first game of each round. Hilarity ensues. Go ahead and watch the draft, then come back if you want a break down of how the rounds went.

So this started out as a rare draft, and it could have been a really good one. The rares we had weren't the greatest, but they weren't absolutely unplayable, and for the most part they stayed right in two colours. The result was a fairly strong Dromoka deck with a black splash for removal. Picture of the final deck below:

After the crash, we ended up losing all three of our first games, though not as badly as we might have expected. Myth Realized is not a bad one drop. Several times we got it up to four or five counters, and it won us the second game of the round we actually won. Basically, it's a fine mana sink, and it shares some of the bonus of dash creatures in that it can't be targetted by creature removal on the opponent's turn.

Obscuring Aether was also useful in a way I didn't expect. We didn't actually have any Megamorphs in the deck, and I thought it was going to be one of those rares I never wanted to draw, but dropping it on turn three, getting a counter on Myth Realized, and then having a surprise blocker for our opponent's morph was well worth the card. 

Assault Formation, Ojutai's Command, and Shamanic Revelation were utter duds in our deck, though I'll be talking more about Assault Formation when I post my next Constructed article. The real strength of our deck was in our white creatures. There were two games we won just on white aggro. We dropped myth realized, then dragon hunter and obscuring aether, then Dromoka Captain, and we were off to the races. When Dragonscale General came down, it was bolster three and against an empty board, that's a win.

Our deck even had sideboard options. Double Pinion Feast against flyers, and a Dromoka Dunecaster against aggro are both strong, and one game we brought in the Sadist to get value off of a pacified creature, to good success.

All in all, it went about as well as a rare draft should, even with the auto submission. I'm just sorry the videos aren't there to watch. We'll try to get these computer issues figured out so that they stop getting in the way of our recordings, but in the mean time...


Thanks for Watching,


-Step.

Tuesday Morning Makeup Draft - May 12, 2015

Hey guys, sorry about not having a video this past Friday. The computer ate our video files! Despite that, we wanted to get a draft up, so we recorded this on Saturday, and I'm posting it here. We're also going to post a draft as normal this Friday, so don't you worry. This week you just get a double dose of Card Advantage!

In a perfect world, you pick your two colours first thing in pack one, and get to take everything good in those colours, and never have to fight with anyone for the cards you want. Of course, with eight drafters and five colours, it never works out that way.

Keeping that in mind, sometimes there's a bomb rare that just pushes you hard into two colours and you can force it to work for you. That's what we managed here. By the end of the draft, we were so heavily in black/red, that a Kolaghan came to us in the middle of the third pack because no one else wanted it. It's a shame that she didn't come out to play, but with Boltwing Marauder, we didn't really need her.

The games went really well for us, and we ended up with a 2-1 record which I think we earned. Not much else to say really. I guess we'll see you on Friday for another outstanding draft!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Draft #47 - "No Impact" - May 1, 2015

This weeks draft found us again in black/red, which is a favourite colour pairing, for both of us in this format. It tends to be highly aggressive and difficult to beat, what with all of the strong dash and supporting cards. As we found out though, that is not always the case. 

We first picked a Pristine Skywise.  Though I generally stay away from pack one pick one two colour cards, as it's generally not the best choice to commit to two colours so early, I still stand by that pick. It's a strong rare that we decided to simply speculate on. If we found white/blue open and viable we would run it, otherwise we would bench it. The only other choices I would have considered were Dragon Fodder, Salt Road Quartermasters or maybe Reckless Imp. That said, we didn't feel we were missing out on much by not choosing one of them.

In pick two Step and I had a differing of opinions as to which card to take- the Ukud Cobra or the Sarkan's Rage. I wanted the creature, Step, the removal. I still think the right choice at this point in the draft was the creature- it's uncommon and really good. A 2/5 with deathtouch for four can be removal, create board stalls, and can get in for damage. I agree that straight up removal is something to prioritize but I felt that a good multi purpose, uncommon creature was the better choice. Re-watching the draft, I still stand by that.

As we moved through the first pack there was the option of picking some decent white cards over the black, which would have set us up for the Daghatar we passed later on, but given that we had no way of knowing that, and the black we chose was fairly solid, I still think we went in the right direction.

Pack three pick one saw Daghatar as our rare. I briefly contemplated suggesting taking it, and hope to pick up a piece of fixing as we had a few drafts earlier. After seeing the Wild Slash though, I figured that a strong piece of removal trumped a admittedly strong card that we'd need to hope to splash in a two colour format. As we moved into the next pick, there was a Wind-scarred Crag that we could have nabbed to splash with, but given that we couldn't be sure we would find one, I still believe that Wild Slash was the better choice for us.

By the end of the draft we created a mediocre red/black deck, that was missing most of the stand out dash cards, and that proved to be a weakness. The R/B decks biggest asset is it's speed, and ours was slower than we would have liked. I will admit that variance was a big issue in some games and we probably would have fared better if our deck had behaved, but still, it just wasn't as strong as we were hoping.

The last thing I want to talk about is Impact Tremors. We only wound up with four dash creatures, though Dragon Fodder would have given us two points of damage to our opponent for the cost of one card, but still, this probably wasn't the optimum deck for this card. Step and I talked about it afterwards and he said a creature would have been better. He's probably right but given that we didn't see Impact Tremors at all, we wouldn't have seen that creature either, so it's really hard to tell if it would have helped in any of our games.

While this wasn't the strongest of decks or the best of drafts, we still had a blast and learned some things, so that, to us, makes it worth while.

Hope you enjoyed the video and thanks for stopping by!

~Tams

FNM Paper Draft Report - April 24, 2015

Last night I decided to try something a little different at draft. I've been playing a lot of black lately, and I've hardly touched green or white at all in this format, so when I had the chance to try a Naya deck last night, I took it.

I didn't know I was going to be able to pull this off until the Fate pack, but thankfully I picked up enough fixing to make it work.

I had to prioritize it highly, but I got enough to make a solid green splash viable.

 

 The real motivation behind the deck came from my pack one pick one. I've played Gleam of Authority once before and found it okay, but not great. A friend played it in green/white, and said it was fantastic, though I think he was operating under best case scenario mentality. I probably wouldn't have picked it, except

that I had a completely mediocre pack.

My second pick wasn't much better, as it was a Glade Watcher. I honestly didn't have much hope for the deck at that point, but quickly thereafter I got something which turned the deck around.

Dromoka Captain isn't a great card in and of itself, but it gave me a direction. I'd already taken an Atarka Efreet and a Tail Slash, but when I saw it I decided to try going for a bolster deck. Gleam of Authority came back in, and I continued to take both red and white Megamorphs, as well as things which can bolster. I was nervous about mana until it came to the Fate Reforged pack, but I managed to scoop up enough mana fixing to make the deck.

I wish I'd had better luck with the deck, but again, Gleam of Battle only ended up in my hand once, and I didn't have a creature around long enough to play it. Dromoka Captain was far more effective. I think I won every game that he came out, but that was due to the fact that I was playing good creatures every turn, not just because of him.

At the end of the day due to one thing or another, I ended up 1-2. Not a great record, and some of it was due to variance, some was due to the deck, and the second round in particular I lost to an absolutely fantastic Kolaghan deck (seriously, it had a warbringer, an ambuscade shaman, and a suite of dash creatures, not to mention a magmatic chasm to punch damage through).

I think I'd try Naya again if the cards were right, though so far I prefer going two colours in this format. I hope everyone else's FNMs went well. I'll be back next week with another draft, and another deck.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Draft #46 - "Kolaghan, feat. Atarka" - April 24 2015

The draft this week comes with no real surprises, oh, except that Jund is awesome! That's not really a surprise though.

Our deck wasn't really Jund, more just Kolaghan with a splash. We could have gone Atarka early on, or Golgari again, but both Tams and I prefer black/red in this format. Tams agrees after rewatching this draft that she should have been more open to green early on, but as it stands, the deck was well drafted and well built.

It helped, too, that so much came to us. If we'd been in green red at the beginning of pack two, we probably would have taken and played Dragonlord Dromoka, and I don't think we would have had enough removal in that deck. Death Wind, Ultimate Price, and double Butcher's Glee won us more games than a single dragonlord would have.

In the end, good luck and good play helped us to take down the draft. Hopefully we can do it again next week.


Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Tams' League Sealed Report

I love sealed. It's probably my favorite format, so I'm always excited to get to play it, as it has a different set of challenges than draft does. Where in draft you have a large amount of agency in how you draft your deck, it is much less so in sealed. All you can do is built the best deck you can with the packs you are given and hope your pool is kind to you.

Today I was pretty lucky with my league sealed, opening some really powerful cards- the trick was choosing the best way in which to fit them together into a cohesive whole. This task was made much more difficult with my lack of fixing.

My white pool featured a Soulfire Grandmaster, which is a terrific card, but without enough instants and sorcerys, it's just a 2/2 with lifelink.

Blue brought me an Aven Surveyor, Lotus Path Djinn and double Ojutai Interceptors, but not much else. 

My green cards were faily good and included Salt Road Quartermasters, double Whisperer of the Wilds, Tread Upon and and an Assult Formation, which could be fun to build around.  

I pulled five gold cards, the first three being Harsh Sustenance, Cunning and Pristine Skywise- none of which were strong enough to pull me into their pairings. 

In the end, a strong black/red pool and double Kolghan- The Storms Fury, made the decision for me and I wound up crafting a hybrid dash deck. 

I ran six dash creatures including a Warbringer, to help cheapen my dash costs. I also had a couple of haste creatures and some smaller ground fodder that I didn't mind sacking to the Rakshasa Gravecaller, or chumping or trading up, using a combat trick. I added a Gurmag Angler, Marsh Hulk and the aforementioned Gravecaller for later game. Here's the deck as it looked for the tournament.

Kolghan did a ton of work, mostly dashing in for five and pumping up my other creatures. He's quite the value card for five mana. 

I threw in a Mind Rot in as a 23rd card and in retrospect I think I would have preferred another creature, no matter how subpar

I didn't have a ton of removal, pulling a Flatten and Wild Slash as my only straight up removal and that had it's limitations. That said, Butcher's Glee out performed as usual, acting as removal and life gain. I also discovered that Ancestral Vengeance plus Wild Slash can handily take care of a 3/3.

When it came down to the rounds, I won the first two by getting in fast and keeping up the pressure. 

Round three I lost due to my old friend variance. The first game I mulliganed to five and couldn't catch back up and the second game was much the same. 

Round four was a mental challenge as I found myself facing Step and his 3/0 record. My getting in super fast, combined with him not getting what he needed saw me winning in two. 

By the end of it all I finished first with a 3-1 record. 

Moving forward from here, I'm looking to trade for more removal, get a Heelcutter and trade up a few creatures. 

Tuesday is our week one matches so we'll see if the deck continues to perform. 

Thanks for reading, 

Tams.

 

Step's League Report - Week 1 and Opening Tournament

Dragons of Tarkir league is here, and as usual, we started with a sealed tournament. If you don't know about sealed, I intend to write an article about it soon, but in the mean time, I'm sure there's lots of info out there on the internet.

Let's take a look at my pool.

That's a lot to look at, so let's ignore that for now, I just wanted to give you all a reference for later. I always start building a sealed deck by separating my cards by colour, and then taking out the unplayable cards and cards I don't really want to play, and seeing what's left. When I was finished, my pool looked like this.

That's still a lot to look at, with no real place to start. If you've had some experience with a format, you can sort of get an idea of what you want to play just by looking at this, but let's say for the sake of argument that I didn't already have an idea.
 My next step would be separating my rares and seeing which of them were playable, as well as whether there was any mana fixing in my pool, most notably, gain lands or fetches.

As it turned out, all of my rares seemed playable, except perhaps the green one. Five of my six rares even stayed within three colours, which isn't unreasonable for a sealed deck to play, so I decided to lay out an Esper deck using all those beautiful rares.

The curve seemed good on this deck, and I had both efficient creatures and removal, but the lack of fixing bothered me. With this deck I would need black mana early, and I wouldn't need blue until later, which was good as both of my double blues were sitting at five mana, but having Anafenza on turn two would be nearly impossible, and without a gain land or two I just didn't see this deck working. The next reasonable step was to take the core of this deck and swap out a colour to see if I could make it more consistent.

I knew I liked my red playables and I had a Swiftwater Cliffs, so swapping the black for red seemed like a reasonable first step.

This deck, too, looked like it had promise, but it always bothers me when I don't have anything to do before turn three, and I didn't think this build would have any better chance of letting me cast Anafenza early. It was true that I had a twin bolt to take out a morph, but in sealed, as in this format in general, I like to get in quickly while my opponent is still trying to set up. Besides, I had two good rares in black, and some good red removal, so I might as well try to build the deck I like best in this format and go Kolaghan

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough playables to just run red/black, but I did have that Rugged Highlands in my pool, and some green playables, so I thought "Let's try Jund"

Finally, I had a deck I was happy with. A decent curve which started early, a couple of healthy finishers, and plenty of removal. I even had enough fixing to all but guarantee me my colours when I needed them. This was the deck I ran at the opening tournament, and it got me all the way to third place, losing only to Tams in the fourth round finals. Still, I was more than happy with a 3-1 record, and it's won me some games since.

I have had my pool for a few more days though, and I've been looking through it. Is this really the best deck available? Do I like Grim Contest more than I should? Should I have had a better look at that Swiftwater Cliffs instead of the Rugged Highlands? I had to put it together to find out.

Looking at this laid out on the table, I couldn't help but think I'd run the wrong deck. While it doesn't have as much power as the green at the top end, the removal is arguably better, as none of it requires a creature with which to fight. This build is far more tempo oriented, with a couple of fliers and big beaters for the late game. I've playtested this build around the house, and I think this is what I'll run for the remainder of week one.

Once I open my optional pack for the week, things may change, but in the mean time, it looks like I've got options.

If you're interested in setting up a sealed league at your local game store, talk to your judge at FNM. They should be able to help you out. It's a lot of fun and it makes good business, so the store owners are generally open to the idea.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Standard Report - Game Day Dragons of Tarkir

For a while now, I've been wanting to add a standard play section to this blog, and it seems like Game Day Dragons of Tarkir is a good place to start.

For the past year and a half I've been working with a three colour deck. I'm sure I'll post something about that here soon, but today I want to share my new creation.

My mono black is a home brew. I've played with net decks when I can afford the cards to build them, but for tournament play, I prefer to use my own builds. I went 3-1-1 for game day, which as far as I'm concerned is a respectable record. Today I'd like to take you through the intricacies of my deck, and explain how it all came together.

First, let's take a look at the whole deck. I couldn't get a good picture, so I had Tams make this lovely mock up!

As you can see, the curve is a little wonky, but it'll make sense as we go through it. This is my suite of creatures.

The one drops serve to hold down the ground and trade away while I build a more substantial board. I chose to put in one Typhoid Rats, one Pharika's Chosen, and two Ruthless Rippers. The Ruthless Rippers are there because if I draw them late, I might be able to deal some damage directly to my opponent by unmorphing them. I decided not to just run four of so that they can't all be taken out by a single Bile Blight.

My three and four drops work together to keep me ahead on board, and the Master of the Feasts may even kill my opponent before they get their legs under them.

The Fate Unravelers are there to take advantage of the fact that my opponents may be drawing extra cards, and they're big enough to eat or trade with whatever my opponents may be doing.

 

By the time a Gray Merchant  or two come down, it should be close to the end of the game, though if things go really long, I have my non-creature spells to help me out.

Most of my spells are functional removal, up until turn four when I drop a whip and start gaining life, and turn five, where I drop a palace siege. My first siege generally functions as graveyard retrieval, though if I've gotten my opponent down to single digits, I might consider using the Dragons clause to drain the last few points of life away.

You'll see that I count Merciless Executioner among my non-creature spells. With the Khans clause of Palace Siege, I can use him as a repeatable edict effect.

The first two turns will either go disowned ancestor, outlast disowned ancestor, tap land, typhoid rats, or typhoid rats, pharika's cure. By turn three, I should be able to cast any of my three drops, with the most important of which being my Master of the Feasts, though a removal spell is almost as good against some decks.

A deck isn't just creatures and spells, and even in a mono-black deck, having the right land is important. The great Scotty Mac convinced me to bump my lands up from 22 to 24, and he was right, but just as importantly is the type of land I decided to run.

Along with 16 basic swamps, I'm running two of Bloodstained Mires, two of Polluted Deltas, two of Temples of Silence, and two of Caves of Koilos. The fetch lands are there specifically to thin my deck and serve to delve out my Murderous Cuts, but the black/white lands are there for another purpose entirely. It would seem that there's absolutely no enchantment removal in black, and with all the premium playable enchantments running around, I had to take another tactic.

The pros will tell you that arguably the most important part of your deck is your sideboard, and I've chosen mine very carefully. With Erase as my insurance against enchantments, and an extra Palace Siege in case my opponents have their own Erase, much of the rest of my sideboard at the moment deals with token removal. I have two extra Hero's Downfalls against Planeswalker heavy strategies, and two Thoughtseize in case of anything I couldn't think of how to deal with (this turned out to be mostly counter spells), I was pretty much set. The only other thing I want to mention is Silence the Believers. It's rare to get an exile effect in black, and this is a pretty good one. If you come up against something indestructible, being able to remove it feels good.

That's all for now. If you have any suggestions on my deck, or questions about how it plays, feel free to comment. I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Thanks for reading,


-Step.

FNM Paper Draft Report - April 17, 2015

Last night's draft was a rather enlightening. I've been saying for some time that I don't like blue/black in this format, so it was high time that I got schooled. Luckily, I was on the right end of the lessons. Here it is, my very first Silumgar draft deck.

Our draft pool was made up of twelve, which made for a very strange draft. Besides that, I think I was just plain lucky when it came to my draft picks. I don't think anyone else was in blue/black at the table, as Soulflayer came to me fourth to last pick, but whatever brought me this fantastic deck, I was more than happy to run it.



One thing I want to mention is that my pack one rare was actually a Silumgar's Command. I decided to take the Youthful Scholar instead to stay open, and for a while it looked like I might have gone blue/red or black/red, but when I was passed a Sage-Eye Avengers third pick in the third pack, it became too hard to resist.

What I want to make clear is that even if I knew I was going blue/black from the beginning, I still consider Youthful Scholar a better pick. It might not have the same power, but in limited, creature always beats non-creature, and drawing two cards on turn five or six is just about perfect to stay ahead of the curve.




  My final record for the draft was 3-1, which put me in second, so apparently blue/black works well enough.



Heads up, our sealed league started today at the store, so look forward to both Tams and my reports on that coming soon.

Thanks for reading,


-Step.