"Wings and Things" - January 30, 2015

Here we are for our first Fate Khans Khans event on MTGO. I was afraid after Khans was such an amazing draft set that Fate Reforged would only take away from it, but thankfully, it has done exactly what the second set in a block should do, and added a healthy dose of excitement to the meta.

I'm actually sort of happy that we didn't have a snap keep bomb rare in our first pack. It let us explore more of the options and I think the way we went was fun. The deck seemed strong to me, and I think if we hadn't had the problems with the client that we did, we would have done much better.

I want to take a moment here to mention that I did submit a reimbursement request for this draft. We've done this three times in all the history of our online play, and every time, the team at Wizards has been quick to get back to us, and reimbursement was issued without question. I am in complete support of the way they deal with these issues. Having that policy in place makes the difference between a poor play experience and a good play experience.

I want to point out several things during deck construction and sideboarding. First, it may not be right just to run "the best cards". Bloodsoaked Champion is definitely a powerful card, but that's because he comes down on turn one. In a deck where black was our splash colour, I feel it was right to take him out, even when we ran an "inferior card" over him.

Another thing I'd like to point out is our decision not to mulligan in game one. It was definitely the wrong choice. I knew that when I decided to keep. I was banking on getting lucky, and that's not wise. The rest of our muligan and gameplay decisions were good, and I feel that if we hadn't had the client issues, we would have won more games. Either way, I'm a little disappointed that our first FKK draft went poorly, but I enjoyed the deck and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

Fate Reforged Release Report - January 24, 2015

While we're all waiting for Fate Reforged to come out online, I figured a release night report would be in order.

Cracking that first pack of Fate Reforged could have been better. I first picked a Wildcall, simply because it was the rare and the rest of the pack wasn't great, but after being passed two Sandsteppe Outcasts, a Mardu Woe-Reaper, and a Harsh Sustenance, I put myself into the position to try a warrior deck.

Pack two pick one was a Chief of the Edge, and I then got passed a Seeker of the Way, but after that, the warriors started to dry up. I did start picking up outlast creatures though, and my deck just sort of fell together.

Having the double Disowned Ancestors was a little awkward as my black was little more than a splash, but luck was with me, and I generally had it down and outlasted by the time I needed to block. Also, having one each of the Abzan Battle Priest, Abzan Falconer, and  Tuskguard Captain (Who are

all outlast lords) along with creatures which put +1/+1 counters on themselves or others (such as

Sandsteppe Outcasts and Armament Corps) made the outlast mechanics faster.

Round one I was up against another Abzan deck, but it was mostly durdle, so I managed to get my creatures down and outlasted to the point where I could swing in over his head for the win. In one game I actually managed to go Disowned Ancestor, Outlast, Sandsteppe Outcast, Abzan Battle Priest, Swing.

Round two I was up against a standard Jeskai Prowess deck, which took a while to get online, but managed to get me down to 4 in the first game. If I hadn't had my Rush of Battle in hand, I would have lost to an Arrow Storm to the face. In the second game I managed to cast Become Immense on my Seeker of the Way (in response to removal) for a 9 damage swing with lifegain.

Round three was the only round that went to three games. I was up against a straight up control deck. The first game I didn't even see a creature, though my opponent managed to kill one of my creatures every single turn. Game two was much different, as a Rakshasa Deathdealer came down on turn two and I really didn't get anything down until turn four. By that time a Sage-Eye Avengers had come down on his side and I was pretty much dead.

After game two I had a much better idea of what he was running, and I decided to board in my Smite the Monsterous, as well as a second Kin Tree Warden to block his Deathdealer on the ground. I even considered boarding in the Winds of Qal Sisma, but decided against it as his deck seemed fairly creature light. To make matters worse for me, I had to mulligan to five, and ended up keeping four land and a Kin Tree Warden, which was far from optimal.

Luckily, I managed to pull out enough creatures to keep him off balance, and I pulled through for the win.

Final record, 3-0. I was fairly sure going into round one that I had a solid deck, and I was gratified, if not surprised, that I came out on top.

Next week we'll have the online Prerelease for Fate Reforged, and hopefully we'll have just as much luck with our picks.

Until then, thanks for reading, and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

"Remove All" - January 23, 2015

Khans of Tarkir has been an amazing draft format, but Sealed will always have a special place in my heart. Most of the time in Draft you can orchestrate your deck to suit you, but with a sealed pool, you really need to find the deck you have, no matter what it is. Sometimes it won't be something you're comfortable with playing, and that's the beauty of the format. Getting good with Sealed makes you a better Magic player.

We thought originally that we didn't have a very strong pool, but you can't judge a pool by its rares alone. In the end we discovered that our pool was full of good, solid removal, and enough early to mid game creatures to curve onto the battlefield. With a couple of morphs which we could use as combat tricks, and a treasure cruise to refill our hand, the deck was actually fairly effective.

I was a little sad that the best we could say of our Trumpet Blast was that it pumped two creatures, but considering that that's still four damage for three mana, it's still okay. The other thing I should have paid more attention to Tams about was that we were running both Dead Drop and Treasure Cruise, and we really only had enough graveyard to support one. Since we had all the removal anyway, we probably should have cut the Dead Drop to run another creature.

2-1 isn't a bad record to finish our Khans videos on, and we're super excited to come at Fate Reforged next week. Until then, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

Introducting: The Manimal Deck - My Fates Reforged Sealed Pool

Unfortunately I was unable to attend our local paper Fates Reforged prerelease, but Step surprised me by bringing me home a sealed pool so I could try my hand at deck building the new set.

I got one rare in each colour and one in multi, which could have the potential for a five colour deck.

Master of Pearls  is a great surprise morph that has to potential to end a game so I was perfectly happy to see him.











Crackling Doom is pretty fantastic as far as removal goes. It does have the slight downside of requiring Mardu mana but fact that the card reads opponent sacrifices instead of destroys, which takes care of  indestructible and hexproof creatures, well worth the three colour cost. The two damage to your opponent's face is just icing on the ouch cake.









My next rare, Flamewake Phoenix, seemed to be telling me that Mardu was to be my clan for this sealed. I wasn't sure what to think of this guy, but in a deck that features high powered creatures, it's ferocious ability could make it quite impressive, and annoying for your opponent to deal with, especially if they don't have a flyer on the field. Specifically, you  have a 3/4 on the field and drop this fellow and swing. They use removal on it. At the beginning of your next combat phase, you pay 1 red and in he swings again, lather, rinse, repeat. The downside is, double red to cast, a flimsyish toughness, and the situational nature of his ferocious trigger. That said, 2/2 flyer for three, if I'm in a deck that supports the double red, I'd give him a go.




Crux of Fate showed up next. This is a board wipe for 3 and double black, or a situational sideboard card for dragon heavy decks. Essentially it's End Hostilities, but instead of the bonus of "and all permanents attached to creatures", Cruxes' added upside. is the ability to destroy all Dragons, which in this format could be relevant.









Temur War Shaman, without it's added ability is, alright I guess. I wouldn't be excited to run it, but in some decks it would make the cut. Why I was excited to try this guy is for his enter the battlefield effect. I've been back and forth about the potential of manifest, so I was curious to see it in action. This ETB means that instead of a 4/5 for six you are getting 6 power and 7 toughness for 6 and on two bodies, which is even sweeter. The only downside I can glean is the potential to manifest a non creature spell.










My last rare was a mythic. Even with the triple blue in the casting cost, it seems like it has the potential to be super powerful. The delve mitigates the 8 colourless cost and in a deck that's firmly in blue, this card could end games.







I laid out my pool by colour and after looking at my fixing, realized that a five colour deck was not going to be something that my cards supported, so I looked elsewhere.

My first deck attempt was Mardu, as that is where most of my fixing was, as well as four of my rares. Sadly, the support cards in black and white were not great and not plentiful. I played the deck many times and came to the conclusion that no matter how I played it, it was just a weak deck.

I was about to call quits to my first Fates experience when I remembered a deck concept I had been boucning around a few weeks ago after viewing some of the spoiled cards- a deck I have termed the Manimal deck.

My idea was to take all of the creatures, especially morphs and any card that allows you to manifest. The thought being, the only thing you will manifest is a creature, land or another manifest card and  the ETB bounce abilities in this set, would also help fix any 'oooops, I manifested my awesome manifest spell' problem.

So I went back through my pool to see if I had enough stuff to make this work, and boy did I.

I wound up going Temur with only one Wind-Scarred Crag as fixing, but that never seemed to be a problem.

Here is a look at the deck.

I'd like to talk about a few of the creatures first.

Another new mechanic to this set, is Dash, and I've heard mixed things said during peoples set preview, but I can report that this little guy was quite fun early game. I found myself with him in my opening hand and only a single red- no problem, just dash him in for three damage and back to my hand. Eventually it traded with a morph, which I was perfectly OK with.













ETB effects and bounce effects can do amazing things and this combo was just amazing.

Step had HUGE dragon on his side of the field and I had zero in the way on conventional removal,  so I used the Sabertooths bounce ability to pitch my Surveyor to my hand so I could cast it and bounce his dragon. Somewhat expensive, I will grant you, but this was late game where I already had some ground creatures and the mana to spend. It won me the game as I had an indestructible blocker on the ground and the ability to keep his flyer from eating my other flyer or doing any more damage to me.









I also had one card using the new bolster mechanic. I ran this to help with my fixing, as it was so terrible and I didn't really have another option. It turned out to be not great. Three mana to get a basic land and then it comes on to the battle field tapped. As for the bolster- just not that strong.








I ran 4 different manifest cards and I had so much fun with them. I only manifested something I didn't want to once, my Aven Surveyor, and I just used the Saber to bounce it back to my hand. so as to utilize the Surveyors ETB effect.

My favourite one by far was Write into Being, which I ran two copies of. The ability to scry two and manifest one, is really powerful in this deck, almost entirely negated the downside of manifesting something you don't want to.








This turned out to be a surprisingly strong deck, that Step is still trying to beat. The ability to constantly drop creatures, as well as ulitlize the ETB effects of cards like Bear's Companion and the Surveyor was just really strong. I'm really looking forward to trying to draft this deck with more focus.

When all is said and done, I am really excited to draft this new set, which is a change from how I felt going in. After listening to a few set reviews, I was feeling that this was going to be a really weak set and not at all comparable to KTK on it's own. Now I feel that it offers some cool new mechanics to explore and works really well with Khans.

Thanks so much for reading,
Tams

"Fate Reforged Paper Prerelease" - January 17, 2015

So I've just gotten home from a fantastic time at my Fate Reforged Prerelease. I know you're probably all itching to get to yours, so I'll jump right in.

I chose Sultai for my clan pretty much on a whim. I would have been happy in any of the clans, and as I went Temur last time, I decided to change it up. I'm not the type to play Sultai, but the purple die and pin called to me, and when I opened my packs, I was glad that I heeded the call.

My entire pool was fairly strong, and I could have gone a couple of ways with it. In the end I chose to stick to my colours, and just my colours, though I did splash red for one of my rares.

First, I should talk about the format. When I heard that the prerelease was going to be four and a half
packs of Fate Reforged, I thought it was going to be bad, but it turns our that having that many of the new cards is interesting. The lack of morphs in this set is made up for by Manifest, which plays out better than I'd initially expected.

I've heard mixed review of Manifest, and I can safely tell you that it's good. Burning through your deck and using lands you don't need as 2/2s makes the game feel better. There's still the risk of manifesting that land you need to cast your bomb, or manifesting your Pyrotechnics or End Hostilities, but it's worth the risk, especially with so much bounce in the format. 

I actually manifested my Treasure Cruise once, but thanks to Temur Sabertooth, I would have had it back in hand, if my opponent hadn't exiled it. The sabertooth handily won me a game anyway by continuously bouncing my smoke teller back to my hand and quicky tearing apart my opponent's board.

Other cards of note were my three bomb rares:

Yasova Dragonclaw is clearly a bomb in limited. She's a 4/2 with trample, and if you can increase her toughness in any way, she can swing in herself for a ton of damage over the course of a game. Failing that, her ability is like a repeatable act of treason, which can quickly close out a game by removing a blocker every turn and giving you free damage, or at least giving your opponent unfavourable blocks.

Silumgar, the Drifting Death ended up being better than I expected. Having a 3/7 flyer is as good as it sounds, and the fact that he's hexproof is relevant. Also relevent is the fact that when you attack with her, she kills all the opponent's spirit and warrior tokens, plus any number of X/1s they might have floating around. If nothing else, he's a big dumb blocker with enough power to kill most things that might want to attack you.

Finally, Atarka, World Render. I had a hard look at my deck and mana base, and decided that she was worth splashing. I'm so glad I did. Along with Silumgar, she won me three games at least. When a 6/4 flyer with trample and doublestrike comes swinging at you, you need to have an answer. If not, it's game over.

At this point I want to mention the Hero's Blade. As I had three legendary creatures, I thought that if I were ever going to run it, this was the time, and while it did some work in the one game I got it, I'd have prefered it be another creature. If I can say that with it attatched to a 3/7 flyer, you should probably not bother running it except as your 23rd card (I still ran 18 land, by the way).

Other cards of note include:

These, along with a Sultai charm, served as my removal. They all did work. I actually prefer Douse in Gloom to something like Pharika's Cure in a multicoloured set. It may not be premium, but it can take out a morph or manifest creature, and that means that it stays relevent much later in the game.

Grim Contest is fantastic in a control deck. I targeted Silumgar more than once, and there's not much that can answer that.

Reach of Shadows I didn't start in my main, but after boarding it in against a Jeskai control deck, I left it in. Five mana, kill anything you care about is pretty good in sealed.

My foil promo was SoulFlayer, and it pained me not to run it, but I just didn't need to. My only targets in the deck for it were my two dragons, and I figured if they were in the graveyard, a 4/4 wouldn't really do much for me. I still could have run it as a 4/4 for two, but in my deck, I preferred refilling my hand with Treasure Cruise. I just didn't need another body when I could make a 2/2 our of a random forest.

My best moment of the evening was the turn after I dropped Silumgar and equipped my Hero's blade to it. I dropped Atarka, giving Silumgar double strike and swinging in to blow up their three 1/1 spirits and deal 12 damage, which was more than lethal

My worst moment of the evening was a mulligan to five and never drawing my third land... but that, too, is part of the game.

In the end, my record was 3-2, which I felt was respectable. It put me in fourth place, and got me four packs of Fate Reforged, which I hope to let Tams open later today so that we can have our own mini prerelease.

I hope that someone out there has found this report useful, or at least entertaining. I wish you all the best of luck at your own prereleases, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all for our MTGO prerelease video in two weeks time.

Until then, thanks for reading,


-Step.

"Five Colour Fumbles" - January 16, 2015

Well, it's almost time for Fate Reforged. I'm not sure whether five colour will be a viable strategy or not, but we wanted to get another hit before Khans disappeared forever. Let's see how we did.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as strong as our last deck, but it ended up being fun to play. We did get more lands than we had the week before, but we sacrificed something in power for the sake of consistency.

Consistency in a five colour deck... maybe I should just stop typing.

Anyway, I think it's fair to say that this deck struggled with what it wanted to do. We were trying to go long game, but the pay off wasn't really there. I'm fairly sure that any deck running two different ascendancy's is far from optimal, but again, it was fun to pilot. In fact, it was so fun that Tams had her first hand at the controls, although she wasn't really given a choice.

Next week we'll be bringing you our final bit of Khans before Fate Reforged comes out online. I'm heading to a prerelease this very evening. I look forward to getting the report out to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

"Khans Rare Draft" - January 10, 2015

It's that time again, it's draft time! This time we play all the rares!

One of the only stipulation drafts that Tams and I do on a regular basis (or about once per set) is the rare draft. We do this for several reasons.

First, it's a whole lot of fun. A lot of the rares are extremely powerful, and even those which aren't usually force you to think in ways which you don't usually get a chance to in limited magic.

Second, it warps what you would usually take to support the deck. As opposed to just "drafting good cards", you have to take mana fixing highly, and perhaps draft other cards to accommodate the rares,

Third, we think it's fun to watch other people draft rares, so we consider it something of a treat to you, dear viewers, to watch us fumble around with strange cards and an awkward mana base.

Drafting rares isn't just something cooky to do for fun. We believe it can also make you a better magic player. Once you have the process of drafting down so that you're winning at a decent rate, the mental exercise of trying to think outside the box and support a deck with a stipulation weighing it down can help build new mental muscles.

I'd also like to note that Khans of Tarkir has so much good fixing that we may do something like this again before the end of the set, and we may do it again for Fate Reforged. If you'd like to see any specific stipulation draft, please let us know! We're always available on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter!

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

"Anything You Can Do..." - January 2, 2015

Welcome to the new year! As a special treat to you, and to ourselves, we decided to try the Holiday cube to very surprising results.

We discovered the true power of Midrange this draft, as in round one we out aggro'd the red aggro deck, in round two we managed to outlast the blue black control deck, and in round three, we came up against a surprising five colour deck which nearly kept us from being able to attack at all... nearly. In short, we ended up facing everything we were afraid of, and somehow came out on top.

Despite our performance, there were still several mistakes which I'd have liked to fix. You'll notice that we skip an entire turn at one point due to my fumbling fingers, and we really can't take credit for our deck design, as we didn't really know what we were doing during the draft. I do, however, think that the result was entertaining, and I hope you enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed playing.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time,


-Step.