"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.

"The Gamer's Emporium" - December 26, 2015

Welcome friends,

this week we have a very special guest, and boy does he deliver. Our local store owner joined us this week, and while we had to teach him how to draft Khans, he taught us a thing or two about how to play Magic. Together, the three of us craft a fantastic deck, which does about as well as you might expect. Take a look.



I'd say the main flaw with Mardu is the lack of a late game, but the removal can more than make up for it. It's not that you can't have a late game in Mardu, it's just that everything you add to make sure you can go long takes away from your early agression.

We never played a true control deck, and I don't know what we would have done against a deck full of counters and bounce, but as it stands, we had a pretty good thing going on. Trumpet blast can truely be a blowout with a field full of weenies, and the combo with Act of Treason is absolutely insane.

It was really fun having Shawn there with us, because we all had very different play styles, and often we would have different opinions about what was the best play. At any given time there may or may not have been a right answer, and depending on your top deck, that can change in an instant.

While aggressive decks are known for their lack of options as compared to control decks, the mechanics of Khans of Tarkir (the morph in particular) allows you to keep your options open much longer than it otherwise might.

I thoroughly enjoyed having Shawn on our channel, and if we get a positive response, he may end up coming back.

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


-Step.

"Way Too Jeskai" - December 19, 2014

I have to appologize for the unscheduled hiatus last week. Our internet would barely let us connect long enough to upload the videos, nevermind review them.

As a result, we're bringing you last week's now! Welcome to our latest Jeskai deck! Drafting it was well worth the lessons learned.

The first thing you'll probably notice is that it's very hard to win games when you're not drawing one of your colours. Even though the draft looked good to me, it turns out that a good deck without a solid mana base isn't a good deck. People have been drafting the common lands a little higher with every draft, and it has become hard to get a hold of them if you're not looking for it.

Another thing to mention is that it pays to reassess the board if it's been stalled for a while. Sometimes things change without you even realizing it. Maybe there's an ability you're afraid of which requires mana to use, maybe someone's about to hit six land and can untap something which has been singing bell struck. This format is both fast and slow in that the board gets developed very quickly on both sides, and stalls into the long game. That being the case, it's important to know where the stall is happening, so you know where your ins might be.

That way you don't accidentally run a creature who suddenly has flying into a creature which has had reach all along.

I think the deck would have been fine if we'd gotten one or two more tap lands, but we'll never really know.

Just a head's up, next week we'll be having a special guest. Sean, the owner of The Gamer's Emporium, will be here to show us how he does it and tell us about his store. We're looking forward to it, and hope you are too.

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


-Step.

"A Comedy of Garretts" - December 05, 2014

This week we have Garrett on for his very first Khans of Tarkir draft. Never having drafted the set before, he didn't have much to say about our picks, but as usual, he really shone during play. This is especially evident in round three, where he clearly should have been in command of the controls. Enjoy!

Even though our first pick, which pushed us into our colours to begin with, never really came out to play, we made what I think was a pretty superb Temur deck. It had an aggressive curve with some removal, and a couple of big finishers.

I was a little trepidatious about splashing the Mantis rider, but with all the tap lands and the Mardu Warshrieker for white mana fixing, running it was basically free, and it paid off.

Though we had learned not to be greedy after last week, the lesson of  "keep calm" was pressed home to me again this week, as you'll see in round 3.

All in all it was fun, and we'll probably be having Garrett back soon, after he's had some experience with the set.

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


-Step.