The new FNM Promo for the Month of December has been revealed and Storm deck players everywhere can now rejoice!
This is a cool little premium for those planning to play in the Modern format in the coming year which will now be an officially sanctioned FNM format. (Great news for those that are tired of the current Standard metagame)
So don’t delay… Go Play at a local FNM Event near your and support your local brick and mortar store!
by Simon Tran
The Standard format has taken shape recently with quite a diverse line-up. Many of you have undoubtedly faced off against a reanimator deck only to realize how resilient this deck is. It’s one of the rare reanimator decks that can also simply hard cast its reanimation targets very often and win.
Here’s the 4 color version we’ve been running:
4-Color Reanimator
Lands
4 x Overgrown Tomb
3 x Rootbound Crag
2 x Woodland Cemetary
4 x Temple Garden
4 x Blood Crypt
3 x Sunpetal Grove
1 x Vault of the Archangel
2 x Clifftop Retreat
Spells
4 x Grisly Salvage
3 x Centaur Healer
4 x Unburial Rites
4 x Mulch
3 x Lingering Souls
2 x Dreadbore
4 x Faithless Looting
1 x Devil’s Play
1 x Sever the Bloodline
Creatures
1 x Olivia Voldaren
1 x Griselbrand
1 x Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
1 x Craterhoof Behemoth
3 x Angel of Serenity
4 x Thragtusk
Sideboard
2 x Duress
2 x Slaughter Games
2 x Oblivion Ring
1 x Purify the Grave
1 x Divine Reckoning
1 x Ray of Revelation
1 x Ancient Grudge
1 x Golgari Charm
1 x Sever the Bloodline
1 x Rakdos Charm
1 x Rolling Temblor
1 x Deathrite Shaman
So where to begin? That’s a rather simple question … the Reanimation spells!
This one was rather obvious to most. However, with the inclusion of Faithless Looting, this card gains much more value. A turn 1 Faithless Looting can easily turn into a Turn 4 game-changing fatty. It basically involves the ‘complex’ decision of discarding Unburial Rites and said ‘fatty’.
You are never really forced to do this unless the deck your facing is more aggressive than the norm. Often times you will simply find yourself casting it later in the game. Contrary to the blazing quick Reanimator decks of the Legacy format, this one is somewhat turtle-ish. It steadily feeds the graveyard and puts roadblocks in place (Thragtusk and Centaur Healer) and then if necessary will begin reanimating some threats.
Unburial Rites can gain you even more value if it ‘happened’ to be a card that you flipped with a Mulch or a Grisly Salvage. It’s similar to the ancient art of Dredging while not actually dredging. It’s more like guaranteeing your future land drops steadily. You can just, if need be, cast it later in the game (essentially making it a kind of +1). I’m sure none of this is particularly new to most you reading this. It is however nice to note that while it is somewhat a key piece of the puzzle, it is rather easy to almost completely side this card out in Game 2 and still be able to play the game out as you normally would. Your opponent will most likely bring in graveyard hate and you can mostly not care. The most popular hate cards will be:
They seem problematic but not as much as one might think.
In the case of Slaughter Games, it depends as to what card your opponent will usually name. A lot of players will make the error to name Unburial Rites. This is due to the fact that you probably only kept 1 Rites in post board. The ‘better’ choice would probably be Angel of Serenity. The even better choice is probably Thragtusk. It is the card that is basically defining the format at the moment. It’s also the card that keeps your deck from simply getting wrecked in the early turns. Thragtusk is also good times with Angel of Serenity.
Purify the Grave is somewhat menacing, but again, since you are siding out your ‘real’ reanimator spells: not so much. It will essentially negate 1-2 targets of Angel of Serenity (unless of course, you simply choose to exile 3 creatures in play)
=3x
/
Yep! Good old Journey to Nowhere. I recall this was a fairly popular card at many many FNMs awhile back. I never really played it myself but it was sometimes used with a Kor Skyfisher to bring it back and exile a bigger threat later on. Now with Ms. Serenity, you can get 3 Journeys for the price of one!
Of course when you are up against the more controllish decks, you are probably targeting another Angel and friends from your grave in the unfortunate case that Serenity gets exiled, dies or bounced. Your opponent pretty much has to ‘nullify’ her with something like Tamiyo’s +1 ability:
It ain’t pretty, but it’ll have to do!
Let’s not forget that our dear old Angel is also about the size of 3 Gravediggers as well. Well, if you equate her flying to the -1 drop in overall power. She becomes a pretty big beater that is hard to ignore. Also, she’s conveniently sized to block an opposing Thragtusk and survive the turn you put her into play. It’s not wonder the price on this card has just gone up since its release. I somewhat doubted it at first, but she is the real deal.
You would expect this deck to play 4 copies of this fabulous card, but it also wants to minimize on the random hate. This is why we run one solitary copy of Gisela, Blade of Goldnight.
Nice to have another ‘playable’ angel that’s not named Restoration Angel. I put the quotes around playable because it is not a universally adopted card in this build. At the same seven-mana investment as Angel of Serenity we somehow feel gipped.
Miss “Thang” here is somewhat of a real deal. Sure, we are not reanimating Elesh Norn and board whiping our opponent’s team like the Frites deck of Standard past. We are however often times threatening lethal or providing a creature that is virtually unmatched in terms of combat.
Let’s see:
A 5/5 first strike body means the attacker has to be a 10/11? to survive?
I don’t believe there are many of those.
Of course, when Gisela goes on the offence, that 10/11 also needs to have flying to even be able to block.
While these things MAY be possible, they are also very unlikely. If your opponent has 3 Angel of Serenity he would not be able to take out Gisela by double blocking either. One of the Angel of Serenity would die to first strike damage and the leftover Angel would deal 2 damage to her. I mean, seriously, think about that! It’s pretty huge.
Now, yes, you can play the part of DoomBladeGuy and argue that she dies to removal. You WOULD be right, except that Doom Blade is now Ultimate Price and… Woah! that doesn’t kill Gisela! What?
…
That’s one tough Angel.
Then again, to be fair, this Angel doesn’t get Ultimate Price’d either:
The other creatures in this deck obviously all have ‘Enter the battlefield’ effects since we need to max out on their value. This is true whether we hardcast them or reanimate them. As previously stated, Thragtusk and Centaur Healer clog up the board and load us up on some life so that our ‘late game’ fatties can come in and do some damage.
The ‘Others’
These cards do not particularly win more but they do offer the deck more flexibility. Lingering Souls is just a great card. Whether you are casting this Tier 1 sorcery from your hand or Flashbacking it from your graveyard, you are always getting value. It plays the dual role of chump blocker x 2 or beater versus the more control-ish decks. Just like Unburial Rites, it’s sometimes a ‘free’ card when we flip it with Mulch or Grisly Salvage.
What is this doing in here?
Are we playing a Jund or some weird Next-Level Grixis deck ?
It’s a bit of an oddball card but it does of course play nice with the rest of the deck. Oftentimes we are just getting controlled by a Tamiyo ,are drawing nothing great and our game plan is being hindered by cards like Rest in Peace and co.
In this case, Dreadbore is a great answer to the Planeswalker problem. It’s nothing fancy but it gets the job done. It also provides us with some ‘versatility’ if we decide to destroy our own Angel of Serenity and collect the goodies she’s been preserving. It can occur in the case of a stalemate in which she is no longer able to profitably defend or attack (or just being tapped down).
Then we have a miser’s Sever the Bloodline. Good versus tokens and the like, as well as critters that have triggered effects when they die (ie: Undying dudes). Just like the Unburial Rites and Lingering Souls, this card can still give us some value even after we ‘dredged’ it with a Faithless Looting , Grisly Salvage or Mulch. Early game, it can really help us out in a bind versus something like double Loxodon Smiter beatdown for example.
Last and probably least is Devil’s Play.
Yes, it can act as a kind of finisher. But triple Red mana Flashback can be rough. It is however possible nonetheless and in the early game can take out something small like a Deathrite Shaman only to come back and deal a considerable amount of damage later to close out the game. It’s probably a card I would replace in a future version but it seems to be working well in this deck thus far.
The deck’s manabase is decent from what I’ve seen. Vault of the Archangel over something like Slayers’ Stronghold is correct. Vault is another good support card for the board-clogging tactic and it raises the value of Lingering Souls. That last part is somewhat obvious, but I see way too many people use that interaction offensively as opposed to protecting their life total with lifelinking deathtouchers.
They need only think about the benefits to realize that even if you never get to block with the tokens and give them deathtouch/lifelink, the mere fact that you are able to do so will deter some aggro. Just leave the mana open and move on to other things. You are technically winning on that front. Your focus now should be trying to win with your other creatures.
The ‘Benchwarmers’
The Sideboard contains some control deck hate as well as permanent removal answers we cant have main deck, meaning : enchantment and artifact removal.
Golgari Charm offers us the flexibility at a mana cost we should have but don’t’ always have, since we are after all a 4-color deck.
Ray of Revelation is probably the better enchantment removal spell. It’s upsides being that you can cast is more easily and that you can probably flashback it later on. Of course, this changes nothing if you happen to discard it or mill it from your deck with Rest in Peace in play.
On that note, you can still use its flashback ability in response to Rest in Peace‘s ‘enter the battlefield’ ability.
Slaughter Games is an interesting card here. It’s odd to see it in this kind of deck as is it’s almost always strictly reserved to Jund decklists. It’s better than it looks from experience, especially in the mirror match. I believe that much is obvious.
What’s not always 100% obvious is its applications versus various decks, especially those that seem to have very limited win conditions. I’m talking mainly about decks that need to win with Runechanter’s Pike, Lingering Souls, Planeswalkers, Entreat the Angels and not much else. If you examine such decks and more or less memorize their contents, this card can go a looooooong way.
As mentionned earlier Thragtusk or Angel of Serenity are also both good cards to call with Slaughter Games. A small note however: if you are planning to name Angel of Restoration, please allow your opponent sufficient time to decide if he passes priority. Otherwise, he is likely to try and flash one in in ‘reponse’ to you just casting Games and outright naming Resto. Can’t be countered does not equal cannot be responded to.
Obviously if you get to the point where your opponent asks you what card you are naming, it is too late for him to respond as your spel is resolving. It’s a somewhat common mistake that I thought needed to be clarified.
Deathrite Shaman is also against the mirror match but can have decent applications versus blue-white decks as well, especially when we can slowly grind away future Snapcaster Mage and Moorland Haunt targets for profit.
The lone Rolling Temblor is a concession to Geist of Saint-Traft or weenie decks that may be a wee bit too quick.
I think the Divine Reckoning slot can be better used but it’s more of a slot i’m using to test various cards. It’s perhaps better used up as a second Deathrite Shaman or Rolling Temblor.
In closing, I would recommend this deck to those of you who have always wanted to play a reanimator deck with a little more versatility and less redundancy. The cards it uses to interact with opposing threats cannot fully be overlooked and make the deck more fun to play in general.
by Steve DDT Giannopoulos
Imprint: the worst mechanic ever
I know what you’re thinking : “Why the random Imprint hate? Isn’t it like soooo last Standard season?”
You would be right too, IF that was the Imprint I was referring to. No sir! Today I am examining what a lot of players tend to do when playing Magic: the Gathering : Assuming they know card text and effects by heart.
A lot of you out there most probably have a good grasp of what all the cards actually do in Standard right now. Or do you?
I’m sure a few of you have tried to play Inaction Injuction as an Instant. I’m also quite sure you have mistakenly put a Rootbound Crag into play tapped even though you controlled a Temple Garden. These are somewhat ‘common’ errors and they are due to the fact that a lot of us use Mental Shortcuts.
In the case of Rootbound Crag, we have just been re-introduced to duals with Return to Ravnica, so it’s a matter of habit. We are used to, since a few years now, playing basics earlier on in order to have our Core Set duals come into play untapped. This pattern is somewhat ‘hard coded’ into our brain that it almost becomes second nature.
The solution to this mistake is obvious: “Read the cards!”
It’s not so simple you see….it’s just a land…a land that produces mana. It also produces 2 kinds of mana and sometimes comes into play untapped. There…simple…Right? Wrong!
You now have a new pattern to learn: Turn 1 Ravnica Dual, Turn 2 Core Set Dual. This is rather important for those of you planning on playing cards like Syncopate without randomly losing 2 life because you played your lands in the wrong order.
In the case of Inaction Injuction, we just assume that based on the card text, the card should be an Instant. I mean, it’s Blue for crying out loud! Why would it be a Sorcery? Well, it just is…most Detain cards are Sorcery speed.
We don’t have to go too far back to see a similar card being ‘Mis-Imprinted’ in our memory. The card is Revoke Existence.
Which bears a resemblance to a good old classic most of us are familiar with:
I was never a big fan of the last image. It somewhat reminded me of that fat guy in Dune.
The evil Barron.
Yeah, I know…you just threw up.
We basically associate Revoke Existence to Disenchant. Our mind makes that link almost immediately. Then it sees ‘remove’ instead of ‘destroy’ and we are like ‘Woah!’. We then eventually notice that it’s Sorcery instead of Instant. We then think “I guess that’s fair, it does remove the card after all”.
I am sure a few people out there have tried to end-of-turn Snapcaster Mage a Revoke Existence. Usually in game 2 of a UW Delver mirror-match. You are not necessarily a bad player for trying, you’re just accustomed to the way certain similar cards work.
Another common mistake is with cards like Mizzium Mortars. Sure it’s red and deals 4 damage most of the time and it kills Planeswalkers. Uh what? It doesn’t? but I thought Red cards burned stuff.
See, this card is more the exception to the rule that most red burn spells can either target players or creatures. Unless you have conditioned yourself to see it more as a Doomblade than Lightning Bolt, you might sometimes hastily try and target a player with Mizzium Mortars.
No worries, you’re not alone.
These are simple examples to more commonly played cards.
Let’s look at something different:
Ah! Yes…the famous Gideon Jura. He who has brought numerous aggressive decks down to a halt with his +2 ability.
Easy enough right? Your guys have to attack Gideon on your next combat phase.
Or…is it?
Enter Hero of Bladehold. She makes a few dudes while attacking and boost the morale of your attackers. Great!
What’s the point?
She does a few things that Mr. Jura does not want you to know:
The tokens that she puts into play are already attacking and can thus attack the player instead of just crashing into Gideon.
I’m sure some of you are aware of this interaction, but convinced that this is news to others.
That’s fine, really. Again, it’s a matter of what you picture Gideon to be. He’s the big bad wolf that makes your next attack phase futile most of the time. We’re just so used to him doing that and we assume that there is no getting around that. (Save for destroying him, removing him,etc).
A lot of times it comes to how we most commonly see a card get used. For instance let’s take another white planeswalker:
Easy enough to read the abilities and understand what they do. Pretty straightforward: boost your little weenies, hit your enemy with a major swing or maybe make tons of cat tokens.
That +1 ability is much more useful than you may think. It does for instance, allow you to put a +1/+1 counter on a Geralf’s Messenger and allow you to destroy it with say a Supreme Verdict later on without the fear of having it come back.
That +1 ability also meant being able to ‘target’ a Phantasmal Image a while back in Standard in order to ‘kill’ it.
If you read into it a little more, the fact that he starts at 4 counters could have been that they didn’t want any insane Sun Titan abuse on that -3 ability, but I digress…
Another card that I sometimes see people play sub-optimally is Sever the Bloodline.
This usually happens in Jund mirror matches. One player will try to remove the other’s Huntmster of the Fells from the game with it only to realize too late that it will remove his as well. Yeah….
On that same note, back when it was first released, a lot of people thought it played a bit like Cranial Extraction or Slaughter Games and that it also affected cards in hand, graveyard and library.
No, I’m not kidding!
Again, it is the cause of certain patterns we see and we jump to conclusion.
Exile…same name… all other… Seem familiar? Haunting Echoes?
Let’s check out a card that does not see much play:
Now a question:
How many of you thought that you could attack with that creature before you had to Exile it?
No?
I’m sure there are some who did something else that is not recommended in this wonderful game:
Read the card too fast.
Sure, it has a lot of text and we want to summarize it by just thinking : “Cool! I get to reanimate a guy each upkeep and lose him at end of turn” Somewhere in there you associate that kind of effect with these similar cards:
Again, this is perfectly understandable. You need to associate it with something similar.
Back when Doom Blade was spoiled, people referred to it as a ‘better Terror‘ or an ‘undercosted Dark Banishing‘. They needed to compare it to an existing card, because let’s face it : It’s pretty much another Instant Black removal spell we have seen so much of.
Mis-Imprinting an actual card with Imprint?
The card:
I have seen this misplayed quite a few times, but the common ones are:
A) NOT making a token at end of turn.
Yes, despite what a lot of you might think: a lot of players are still not used to the ‘end of turn’ trigger having passed and then being able to active this afterwards. So they would wait and use it on their turn or just make a token to block.
B) Doing the end of turn token, but then making another one on their main phase. Only to find out that they just made 2 tokens of the same Legendary creature.
This really happened and the guy seemed pretty competent too. He made a token of Griselbrand and then another one on his Main Phase 1 so that he could deal a ‘lethal’ 14 points of damage. You can only imagine how red his face got when he realized his error.
Even in return to Ravnica, there have been a few misreads. Most notably:
It’s easy,no? I’m sure most of you have corrected it during lots of games.
-2 : the cards not chosen go back at the bottom of the library.
Yeah, it’s obvious. It has to be, it’s on the card. Really?
People familiar with Fact or Fiction will always just go ‘Fact’ when activating the -2.
In fact, it’s not ‘Fact’ at all. The remaining cards do not go to the graveyard. That would be a little too good in this format.
It’s easier for newer players that are not used to the older cards with similar effects, I guess.
Until next time: Read the F&*n cards!
Twice over if you must. Never assume you know what they do
We now have all the cards in the sough-after product:
Normal-sized FOIL cards:
Nice utility and randomness all in one. Monored EDH decks rejoice as they can now finally have a FOIL version of this cool card!
A more affordable way to now have your own FOIL Command Tower. However, due to the limited availability of this product..affordable might not be the right word.
Cool huh? It was never really a ‘money’ card until recently and even at that. I remember playing this in Legacy as a counter to Decree of Justice. Cycle it…making it uncouterable and killing all the peasky 1/1 tokens. Of course, if you wanted t kill the Angel tokens it was so much sweeter!
A great EDH card. Sort of like a Commandeer but sometimes better as it can simply counter something at worst.
Ah! Good times! It was kind of fun playing this in EDH knowing it was a somewhat rare and unique inclusion. Putting a Lightning Greaves on it made it sooo good. A veritable Avatar of Woe in Red at half the cost.
Now even more players will be able to experience it’s awesomeness in a color that has long been the underdog in EDH.
Well, they sometimes print a few oddball cards. It’s allright, I guess.
A definitive EDH staple. Colorless Removal at its finest. New art to boot! WOOT WOOT!
Another Commander reprint! This one is a lot more playable and sometimes makes the cut in some more fringe Legacy decks. Great in multiplayer as well. Others will get to draw cards if they attack someone other than you. Pretty cool for redirecting aggro from yourself onto others. Of course, you can play some unblockable dudes and draw free cards as well.
Another Commander FOIL reprint as well. This one is probably the most popular of the commanders as it makes for very interesting deckbuilding. Dragons, Demons and Angels! Oh my!
Hm….definitely great if you never owned one. As a collector though, I must admit I am rather steamed.
On the plus side, this is a really limited product and I don’t expect the original value to drop much.
I must admit, it’s pretty Sweet!
I am a big fan of randomness in multiplayer games and this guy is basically a boosted Enigma Sphinx. Lots of fun to be had with this guy. As a commander, yyou can cast him, pop the board, draw cards, then he hits play and attacks. (Cascade into Devastation and Tidings for example)
This was getting tough to find in regular trades. People were definitely hoarding this thing. Probably the reprint I can most appreciate.
Lookin’ good! Everyone wants this card. From the casuals to the EDH pros. It’s probably one of the best selling cards of all time.
Power common of commons! I remember how common these were when I started playing. People would randomly play them sometimes. For a common, it’s not very common to see anybody trading these. Eventhough, it is probably one of the most annoying EDH cards, I’m glad to have to see it in this Collector’s box.
The sometimes ‘Super Sensei’s Divining Top‘ is very much at home in this box. Having gone up to 30$ and being mostly an EDH card made it somewhat hard to acquire.
Interestingly enough, Land Tax, the card that made Scroll Rack escalate is not in this box. Also, nothing super broken has been done with it in the Legacy format….thus far.
The one we all knew about!
It changes little to the fact that this is one of the coolest reprints since…when…whenever.
Serves as a mini-Sensei’s before you draw and gives you extra cards when you’re greedy. Or in EDH, since you start at 40 life, pretty much almost always.
Also a great way to ‘pimp out’ your Maverick Legacy deck.
A nice little Clone variant. FOIL reprint of this scores many casual points. Er…I mean…casual FOIL points. No wait, FOIL casual FOIL points!
They can’t all be awesome…
Oversized cards:
by Xavier Biron
Commander
Lands (33)
21 x Snow-covered Mountain
Thawing Glaciers
Scrying Sheets
Mouth of Ronom
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Tectonic Edge
Vesuva
Homeward Path
Maze of Ith
High Market
Miren, the Moaning Well
City of Shadows
Creatures (23)
Goblin Welder
Anger
Urabrask the Hidden
Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
Karn, Silver Golem
Stuffy Doll
Conquering Manticore
Bloodshot Cyclops
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Homura, Human Ascendant
Wurmcoil Engine
Charmbreaker Devils
Hoarding Dragon
Solemn Simulacrum
Obsidian Fireheart
Zealous Conscripts
Inferno Titan
Duplicant
Greater Gargadon
Steel Hellkite
Akroma, Angel of Fury
Rimesclae Dragon
Mindclaw Shaman
Artifacts (21)
Claws of Gix
Sol Ring
Lightning Greaves
Gaunntlet of Power
Gauntlet of Might
Umbral Mantle
Crucible of Worlds
Dreamstone Hedron
Spine of Ish sah
Expedition Map
Mimic Vat
Mana Crypt
Thousand-Year Elixir
Oblivion Stone
Skullclamp
Batterskull
Sensei’s Divining Top
Extraplanar Lens
Swiftfoot Boots
Tormod’s Crypt
Liquidmetal Coating
Caged Sun
Culling Dais
Spells (22)
Starstorm
Vandalblast
All is Dust
Blasphemous Act
Shattering Pulse
Wheel of Fortune
Glacial Crevasses
Grab the Reins
Reroute
Act of Aggression
Chaos Warp
Unwilling Recruit
Insurrection
Karn Liberated
Stranglehold
Mass Mutiny
Recoup
Word of Seizing
Reforge the Soul
Reiterate
Devastation
The deck is basically about stealing and sacrificing your opponent’s permanents or destroying them with Starke after you are done with them. The deck could have maybe used a Helm of Possession or a Trading Post as well, but it seems pretty tight already. Give it a try or examine the list to see if you can find some sweet interactions to include in your own EDH deck.
Contrary to most EDH decks, the manabase is also rather affordable. No duals, just a bunch of snow-covered mountains!
Here’s the exclusive Game Day playmat:
The Game Day Top 8 Promo card:
And finally, the Promo card that everyone gets:
Go down to your local gaming shop and bring your latest Standard concoction to see how it fares versus the rest of the field!
Get your playset at a local comic store near you before they are sold out!
Update!
Due to a high demand, there will be a second printing. It will of course, contain the Standstill promo card.
by Steve DDT Giannopoulos
Today’s article is one I am not accustomed to writing. You guessed it: it’s a Limited one!
After playtesting a bit of Modern with Xavier Biron a few days before he had to leave for Pro Tour: Seattle, we decided we should run a few drafts with some of the local players at a nearby local store. One of the guys who works there, Chris, was nice enough to gather up some peeps and we were set.
I’m usually greedy to a fault when I draft. I hate the 2-color decks but I was trying to help out a friend, so I drafted properly for a change.
Pack 1, pick 1: I went with a Pack Rat. I am sure you have read up on or played enough Limited to know that this card is rather insane.
Pack 1, pick 2: Nabbed a Gatecreeper Vine , setting myself up for a Golgari build. However, Rats is pretty splash-able. So I thought it would be an auto-include if I could get enough fixers.
Pack 1, pick 3: It was a tough pack, but I decided on a Golgari Keyrune. Again, staying somewhat flexible in my manabase and colors. At worse, it would be an accelerator and at best … it would be a nice little Deathtouch creature that could nullify one of their big ground guys.
Pack 1, other picks: mostly 2 Guildgates because of the mana stability. In case I go 3 colors, maybe more. I feel more Greedy T than DDT.
Pack 2, pick 1: Supreme Verdict. Now this was not for ‘value’. I was realistically able to play this card as I had a way to fetch my lands in Gatecreeper Vine and I had a Azorious Guildgate as well. I wasn’t going to really draft anything else that was blue just because i can splash this.
I think this is a common mistake a lot of players, including myself make. My deck was mostly Selsnyan with an odd Golgari card or two. Trying to now switch colors or add one in at this point is probably a major no-no. A bigger mistkae would be to grab cards that require 2 blue mana and further mana-screw my deck in the process.
As Zac Clark stated before: ” a so-so two-color deck > than a mana-struggling 3-color one”.
Pack 2, pick 2: I go with a Transguild Promenade. Yep! I am probably for sure playing Supreme Verdict now.
Pack 2, pick 3: Selesnya Charm?
is this normal? Not really, but it’s somewhat clear that the 2 people to my left were not playing Selesnya. Unless of course, there was something insane, like an Armada Wurm in the pack or mayyyybe Trostani?
This card does many things as all the other charms do. However, it’s the one that has the best removal potential. It can also save one of your guys or create a surprise attacker at the end of your turn. It’s the non-rare I want to see most when playing Selesnya.
Pack 2, the rest: Some mediocre stuff: Giant Growth, Keening Apparition, Sluiceway Scorpion and Courser’s Accord (aka. how to also multiply Pack Rat tokens without discarding.
Pack 3, Pick 1: Angel of Serenity for the value/ bomb I need to stay in the late game.
A small anecdote, if I may:
Prior to the draft, Xavier grabbed my packs and tossed me his. I was kind of having a bad premonition that this ‘trade’ would bite me in the you-know-what I had these disturbing images of him laughing in my face and saying: “Best trade ever!” So I went with my gut feeling and grabbed the packs back from him. I then proceeded to triple pack slap him.
For those of you who don’t know what it is, the name says it all. You stack the 3 packs, grab them by the edges, wave them a bit and slap the other player in the face. The sound of each pack clapping into the other one as you connect with the slap is quite priceless.
Yeah, it’s childish. However, if a part of me wasn’t a child, I probably would not be playing this fabulous game.
Pack 3, pick 2: Remember when I said I wanted Selesnya Charm more than anything? Well, this is #2 on the list of selesnya non-rares. Centaur Glade on Legs with another random upside.
All the Guildmages are decent picks, but I have a soft spot for one that can flood the field. If it meets an untimely demise later on, it will have a least left a Centaur or other token behind…well, usually.
Pack 3, pick 3: Not much in my colors, so I grab a Dark Revenant. It might kill a few small fliers on defense or break a ground stalemate later in the game. It’s probably not something I will definitely play maindeck. I’m 50/50 on where it will end up.
Pack 3, pick 4: Treasure Find. Again, it was not a great selesnya pack. Seems I’m seeing an decent amount of black…maybe …nah…
Pack 3, pick 5: Rites of Reaping? Yeah, sure, why not? Removal is pretty good even in this form. I don’t have any Trostani’s Judgments yet ( I know right?), so I pick this up in its stead.
Pack 3, pick 6: Bazaar Krovod. What is a Krovod? This thing, I guess.
Not a card I think highly of, but it’s sizeable enough to block well. I thought of a few scenarios that it can come in handy, like if I had to give pseudo-vigilace to my deathtouch dudes. In the end, it just seemed like the best playable card in the pack.
Pack 3, the rest of the 14: I get a couple of Sewer Shamblers that I think I mostly cut so that i don’t lose to those. They are deceivingly good. Something I discovered will boarding them in versus black-based deck or decks that could out aggro me. He usually dies then Scavenges on the cheap. This makes him rather decent.
Deck:
1 x Supreme Verdict
1 x Dark Revenant
1 x Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
1 x Gatecreeper Vine
1 x Golgari Keyrune
1 x Angel of Serenity
2 x Armory Guard
1 x Eyes in the Skies
1 x Courser’s Accord
1 x Centaur Healer
1 x Giant Growth
1 x Rites of Reaping
1 x Treasure Find
1 x Keening Apparition
1 x Seller of Songbirds
1 x Sluiceway Scorpion
1 x Sunspire Griffin
1 x Trostani’s Judgment
1 x Selesnya Charm
1 x Seek the Horizon
1 x Thrill-kill Assassin
1 x Pack Rat
1 x Azorius Guildgate
1 x Selesnya Guildgate
1 x Golgari Guildgate
1 x Island
3 x Swamp
5 x Forest
5 x Plains
2 x Sewer Shambler
1 x Giant Growth
vs. Nicolas
Both games were similar. We traded a bit here and there, I Scavenged on fliers and eventually got there. Nothing too scientific. In the end, it’s knowing how to make the right trades when you have to.
1-0
vs. Xavier
We have played many many times over the years. He usually has the edge in limited versus yours truly.
He has the typical Azorius deck and knows that I am splashing for Supreme Verdict.
Game 1
It’s a close one and it becomes a race until the end. He gets the tempo edge with a Dramatic Rescue and then lands Seller of Songbirds to get a small flier and peck away at my remaining 5 health. In the final few turns I had cast a Dark Revenant, but he was Detained twice over.
Game 2
He start off with a swarm of weenies which I have trouble containing. I had Verdict the whole time but was down on the blue mana. A few turns later, facing a possible loss, I draw Gatecreeper Vine to tutor up an Island. I then cast Supreme Verdict and come back to eventually win that game (after I Treasure Find it and cast it again later).
Game 3
A tight one that wet long. On turn 4, I cast a Seek the Horizon. This card is mainly in my deck for Angel of Serenity which I eventually drew . Obviously, this immediately turned the tide in my favor. With not real way to remove the Angel, Xavier was not left with many answers in his deck. (He had used his one Arrest on a Centaur Healer in the previous turns).
He drew dead for a while and then muttered something about how ‘Unfair’ this particular Angel was.
2-0
vs. Yann
He offered me the split, but the guy working at the store mentioned something about it being preferable if people did not split at the more casual FNM-style events. I have no problem with that at all. 1st place was 6 packs to second place’s 4.
And…we’re off…
Game 1
He comes out of the gates with his team of unleashed dudes. I immediately make a memo to myself to side in my Sewer Shamblers for Game 2. At one point he has a Desecration Demon in play and I cannot let him actually attack or I lose. I brain farted a turn and chose to sacrifice my Dark Revenant, forgetting that I HAD to put it back on top. This would have been an OK play provided I could attack him on my turn to push through some damage. Alas, this was not the case. I put the Revenant back on top of my deck, only to re-draw it. Yay!
Game 2
His deck was all about speed and I had stabilized pretty early with Armory Guards and Centaur Healer. I later was beating down with the Guards and a Bazaar Krovod giving Vigilance to a Golgari Keyrune. None of these are particularly appealing to block. Other than the Demon, the biggest creature in his deck is a Perilous Shadow. The rest of the ‘fatties’ being 4/4s and thus ineffective vs 2/5s.
Game 3
We trade a few creatures here and there until I cast a Pack Rat on turn 5. The amazing thing about the Rats is that it works well with things like Trostani’s Judgment and Eyes in the Skies. Things get out of hand quickly.
The final nail in the coffin was a Angel of Serenity taking away his 3 potential blockers.
Note: i did play the Sewer Shamblers in Game 3, but he never played actual Swamps. He played 2 Guildgates and one Promenade as his black mana sources.
3-0
I have to say that I never regretted the Black splash in this deck. While I didn’t grab enough actual removal, the Sluiceway Scorpion and the Golgari Keyrune did a great job at deterring some aggro. The Supreme Verdict seemed fine in this deck as it forced some people to try and play around it as soon as they saw I had the available mana.
The deck played more of a ‘grindy’ game than a regular Selesnya deck, making it truly more of a Junk deck. I had enough good removal plus the Angel to warrant the inclusion of Treasure Find. It wasn’t anywhere near the best Return to Ravnica deck I made, but its mix of good utility cards and bombs cam through in the end.
Brother Of Runes 