xkcd

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 5:17 am UTC

Another edition of FNM report:

No characters tonight, although one guy did raegquaat after playing against an Innistrad block miracle deck that was basically designed as a troll deck (to be fair, the guy had previously lost to me when I managed to get three Inkmoths in my starting hand, and drew the fourth on turn three, so he was having a bit of a bad night)

I went 2 and 2 again, won the first two matches, lost the second two.
The game winners in the first two matches were good starting hands (the aforementioned three Inkmoths in one hand, and another game against a different opponent with three Blighted Agents) and Wild Defiance, which has proven to be quite the 'beatdown'. A few people were surprised at how well it performed, but I saw some other players who were having some success with it themselves and a few others trying to build it into their decks. I suspect that Wild Defiance will make a good showing int he Metagame in coming weeks.

Match three was against a Human deck and was pretty close, I lost game one due to some bad draws, game two I won when I managed to sneak an Ichorclaw Myr past a 1/1 blocker with Wild Hunger for the final five damage, and game three I almost pulled out with Wild Defiance and Artful Dodge, but got beaten to the punch.

Match four was interesting, my opponent was playing a Golem/Token deck with lots of Blade- and Wing- Splicers (and of course, the meta-game staple Lingering Souls to provide chump blockers, the only thing that I hate in standard right now that it was missing was Delver, though for all I know there may have been some in there) and Intangible Virtue
I managed to win game one with a Blighted Agent, taking a beating but managing to get in 10 poison counters before too many golem tokens came out. The other two games, I was brutalized. Only saw one Blighted Agent and couldn't get it past Mana Leak, no Wild Hunger and no Artful Dodge.

Typically, my response to token-heavy decks has been Ratchet Bombs, Blight-Widows and some flying hate, But now that I have four Inkmoths, I don't really need as much flying hate, and board-wiping is only really slightly effective against most token decks, since they can just pull out more token generators. In this case, my opponent just flickered the Splicers to get more Golems out, and Lingering Souls has flashback anyway.

I feel like instead of trying to hate on the counters, I should side in more, faster pumps (oh how I wish Giant Growth was in standard right now) and play with full playsets of Assault Strobe and Artful Dodge to try and out-race the token generators and sneak more hits past the chumps.
I dunno, what other good strategies are there for token heavy decks?

EDIT: For some reason I keep thinking about how Putrefax would do in this matchup, and I just realized that it could be quite handy in combination with Assault Strobe. May have to try that out.

by **b.i.o** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:35 pm UTC

Red is definitely my new favorite AVR draft color. It has decent removal (for this set, at least), every creature that's not raging poltergeist is playable (and almost all of them are 1/2/3 mana), it synergizes well with any of green/blue/white, and it's easy to pick up a couple of later game threats in another color to help you win late if you don't manage to end it early.

by **mosc** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:44 pm UTC

EdgarJPublius, I think you're running into what I've been describing for the past few pages. Your brew is just a turn or two slower than it needs to be. Ditch some of the versatility from the three colors for all out speed. If you're thinking about a 5 casting cost card, you've already lost what that deck does well. It wins early. 5 lands you should have already won. Not saying it's unstoppable, but your best percentages come from speed.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:53 pm UTC

Yea, the Putrefax was my first thought for dealing with the problem, but I've already pulled out all the flying-hate from my sideboard and replaced it with faster pumps and red haste effects.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jun 16, 2012 6:01 am UTC

FNM Report:

Did Avacyn kill Delver? I've seen a few of what I would think of as 'typical delver decks', but no delvers in the last few weeks (not that I mind).

This week, 16 and proud was back, with yet another apparently newly purchased Scars block event deck (where did he find it!?) that had to be divested of all traces of Zendikar block, leaving a pitiful shell. Still looking for a Tibalt, but with an even fatter stack of commons and bulk rares, which is probably slowly approaching the value of a Tibalt through sheer quantity, but which no one is likely to ever actually take in trade for a Tibalt.

Made some good trades as well, grabbed some Kessig Wolfruns (finally, but now I dunno if I even want to play them anymore) and another pair of Wild Defiance for a playset. Also made a pair of trades for pure nostalgia, a Chainer, Dementia Master (which I have already, but pretty much ruined from being played) and a Vesuvan Doppelganger (which I used to have, but was stolen in the same theft as my previously mentioned organ grinder grave-robbing deck, Also, the Doppelganger was the first card I ever bought with my own money, giving it extra sentimentality)

As for the actual games, pretty control heavy tonight, which turned out well for me. A few tense situations where I just couldn't get a creature past the counters/removal, but my Inkmoths and Contagion Clasps put in work and eked out some wins.

In the first game, I mulliganed to 4 and my opponent to 5, but I hit an Inkmoth in my hand and took it, game 2 was a similar story, though we only went to 5 and 6 respectively. I didn't see much of his deck in either of those games, but I didn't hit many creatures either, pretty much stuck with Inkmoths.

A later game in another mach had 6 poison counters on my opponent, but he managed to hit two Stonehorn Dignitarys and some flicker effects to keep me from putting in the last hits, that one I pulled out with the contagion clasp, clocking him with proliferate for the last four turns while I kept enough blockers out to keep his attacks at bay.

Pretty much every other game was dominated by some combination of Wild Defiance with Artful Dodge and/or Assault Strobe. In one match, I blew away a Frost Titan that had been locking down my Inkmoth and pounding my blockers, with Mutagenic Growth and Wild Defiance on a Myr, and then went on to put two more Mutagenic Growths on my Inkmoth, combined with Wild Defiance for lethal damage in one swing.
Another game saw the perfect storm of Artful Dodge, Assault Strobe and Titanic Growth on a Glistener Elf (with Wild Defiance as the unnecessary cherry on top) for another one-hit lethal combo.
In game 2 against that opponent, Artful Dodge came into play again, this time sneaking in the last 1 poison counter on a plague myr after a board-wipe.

Over-all it was a blow-out, 4 and 0 in matches, 2 and 0 in every individual match, my first FNM victory and first undefeated tournament. That plus the recovery of my beloved Doppelganger made this a pretty good night

by **Bigtraine** » Sun Jun 17, 2012 4:41 am UTC

Nice work, Edgar.

I also had a good week at FNM. I went 5-0 playing a Black/Red "Zombie Pod" deck. I had just thrown in together before the tournament and was not expecting much other than having a good time with it.

Round 1 I played against a mono-blue deck. It was running the "delver package" (delvers, snapcaster, ponder, vapor snag, mana leak) plus invisible stalkers and swords from what I could tell. I came out of the gate too quickly and was able to win fairly easily 2-0.

Round 2 was against a black/white tokens build. These were pretty fun matches. I ended up winning game 1 off of a phyrexian metamorph turned Sword of War and Peace equipped to a Mortarpod germ swinging past him white tokens. Game two was close but he was able to overwhelm me. Game 3 was pretty epic as I was able to get some early damage in but he stabilized with intangible virtue and a miracled Entreat the Angels. I managed to steal the game off of two morbid-enhanced Brimstone Volleys when he had me dead to rights on the board.

Round 3 was against a green/white aggro build. I went 2-1 against him as well. Again Brimstone Volley was the big finisher. Using Birthing Pod to sac Geralf's Messengers into Metamorphs to copy the Messangers while Blood Artist is in play was also alot of fun. The game I lost was due to a Sigarda and early beats. All three games were pretty close and fun.

Round 4 was against a typical Blue/White delver build. 2-1 again this round with some pretty close matches. In game three I was barely able to sneak in exactly lethal damage with the last card in my hand (Geralf's Messenger enhanced by a Cavern of Souls to dodge the counterspell shenanigans).

Round 5 was a mono white human aggro build that was surpisingly brutal. I had a lot of fun in this round. I was playing against one of the younger players at the store and this was the best he had done in a tournament to date, and he is a good kid so I was happy for him. Honestly I would have been fine with him winning, but I wasnt going to throw the match, thats for sure. Game 1 I mulliganed down to 4 and kept a hand of Gravecrawler, Gravecrawler, Swamp, Mortarpod. I drew into another swamp and a Highborn Ghoul over the next couple of turns and was able to get his board pretty clear by using the Mortarpod on the Gravecrawlers and recurring them. He made a couple play errors as well that contributed to the win. Game 2 was a blowout win for him, I am not even sure I got an attack in. He was able to overwhelm me easily. Game 3 was back and forth, but I was able to win with a Falkenrath Aristocrat and his Metamorph twin swinging in the air, and then mortarpodding off a Messanger for 13 points.

I benefitted a lot from people not knowing the deck at all and making sub-optimal plays against it. I also suffered from not knowing it real well and made my share of mistakes too. I think when I play it again, people will be more prepared for it. I remember playing in the first round and people are checking out the deck, and they figure its just a zombie build, and then I bust out the Birthing Pod and confused the heck out of people.

The great thing about the deck is that it was a lot of fun to play. There are many decisions to make and plenty of chances to make good plays and feel smart, or make bad plays and feel less smart. The ability of the deck to chunk out large amounts of damage from nowhere is also a highlight of the deck for me. After some games you would look at the board and wonder how the heck it won, but it did. Brimstone Volley was definitely the MVP for me. I had games where I got them low enough, and I could attack into them with some puds, and they were left in a catch-22 where they couldnt just take the damage, but if they killed them and turned on morbid then I could fire off some 5-pt burn spells. Both of the pods (Birthing and Mortar) plus the Aristocrat made enabling morbid pretty easy.

Here is the decklist. It is not optimized for sure (like I said, just threw it together prior). The sideboard was terrible and I am not even going to list it. All I know for sure is that I need 4 Black Sun Zenith in there for my meta - the rest I need to re-evaluate.

Creatures: (27)
4 Gravecrawler
2 Diregraf Ghoul
3 Fume Spitter
4 Blood Artist
4 Highborn Ghoul (these were supposed to be Gloom Surgeons but I didnt have any, although they worked out very well so they may stay)
4 Geralf's Messenger
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat

Spells: (6)
4 Brimstone Volley
2 Tragic Slip

Artifacts: (4)
2 Birthing Pod
2 Mortarpod

Land: (23)
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Dragonskull Summit (I only own 3)
1 Blackcleave Cliff (I only own 1)
4 Woodland Cemetary
11 Swamps

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 5:14 am UTC

FNM Report:

2 and 2 again. Won the first two matches, nothing really exciting there. Match three was really intense and fun. Playing against a Blue/Red/Black deck with Tamiyo and Chandra which managed to keep most of my threats locked down and eat through my pumps. I tried to power through with some red haste from my sideboard, but I just didn't have enough to make it work. Inkmoth and Contagion Clasp are typically my answer to this kind of lock down, but I just couldn't get two out at a time, and of course Tamiyo could just keep whichever one I had out infinitely tapped. The combination with Chandra was particularly brutal since all of my creatures are 1 toughness.
I maybe could have taken game one, except for ratchet bomb (I didn't know people main-boarded Ratchet Bomb, though it makes sense with all the tokens still infesting the meta-game) which made trying to play out too many 2cmc creatures at once undesirable.
I used to have Viridian Corrupters in my sideboard, which would be perfect for this situation, and after tonight, I think I'm gonna stick them back in there.
Blight Mamba with it's regeneration may also be a decent sideboard for this kind of situation, but I dunno.

Match 4 was against the same opponent as Match 4 two weeks ago, when I last went 2 and 2. Only this time, instead of golems, she had a red-white deck full of double-strike and battlecry. I tried siding in a playset of shocks to keep the threats down to a manageable number, but only managed to draw one, not enough to deal with the devastating Lightning Mauler into Silverblade Paladin into Hero of Bladehold she managed to play in both games. I almost took game2, but missed a land drop and had to block with an inkmoth, so I didn't have enough mana to both activate the remaining inkmoth and pump it to do the final damage.

I feel like I went in to this one with a sold maindeck, but my sideboard let me down.
Here's the latest maindeck (only slightly modified to accommodate a full playset of Inkmoths and a pair of WIld Defiance. Also decided to go with a playset of Assault Strobe instead of 2x Strobes and 2x Shocks)

Spoiler:

My sideboard is a bit of a mess, the only stuff I actually have any plans for is my playset of Shock, a ratchet bomb and some Uncanny Speed (is there any other decent Haste-granting spells right now I should be keeping an eye out for?), a mountain if I want to play either of my red playsets with uncanny speed, and some junk I threw in to make 15 cards with the vague idea I might want to 'change things up a bit'.

I'm thinking now that I'll throw out the junk and add my 2xPutrefax+ 1xGreen Sun Zenith (definitely would have been handy in Match 2), a playset of Viridian Corrupters (also would have been good in match 2, also nice to change things up from my 1/1 swarm)

Still not sure what to do about Match 4 though.
Any thoughts? The only thing I can think of to make my deck any faster is to add haste, but I just don't think there's enough haste in standard right now for that to do much good.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I played a few casual games of Legacy in between matches, swapping in all my delicious not-legal-in-standard pumps like Rancor, Groundswell and Giant Growth (Learned my lesson from the Legacy night earlier in the month, leave that stuff sleeved up and ready to rock and roll now. And the best part is; Rancor is coming back in M13, so for a few months at least, infect is gonna be hilarious in standard).
It was total devastation, turn 3-4 wins every game, completely ridiculous.

Finally, picked up some contagion engines in trade, been trying to snag these for a while, got some ideas for a Proliferate based Legacy deck I may try out in the near future.

by **mosc** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:52 am UTC

If you take out the 3 clasps and a land, it would speed up some. You really want to stay down to 60. More inkmoth and glistener elf draws earlier. Definitely a better brew though, more focused. I'd probably sideboard the clasps.

Gut shot is the sideboard card you're looking for. They don't cost much. I like viridian corrupter too but there aren't many artifact heavy decks in standard at the moment (cept pod maybe) so he's not going to see much play from you board. Fling is a good board card if you run into stonehorn dignitary based strategies. Mental misstep is great against delver. Ratchet bombs are almost a must in this format which is sad but whatever.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:34 am UTC

Yea, siding out the Clasps is a good call. They're a great clock against decks like Match 3 (usually) but now that I think about it, they're not as useful than when I was running more +1/+1 counter-generating effects in addition to -1/-1 from infect, and are definitely slowing me down in games like Match 4 when I need to be refocused on pure speed.

The Viridian Corrupters can serve a number of roles though. I used to run them when I had a lot of token-generators to get rid of ratchet bombs, but Ratchet bombs are still a threat when I'm running all 2cmc creatures, and the two toughness is a good defense against stuff like Chandra and/or Gut Shot.

I suppose instead, I could side Rot Wolf and/or Cystbearer, which still hit the >2cmc and >1 toughness to make them a bit more survivable than all my myr/agents/elves (Cystbearer especially, with three toughness), also, (2)(G) may be better than (1)(G)(G) now that I'm running three colors.

In my experience so far, there are some decks that are just going to stall me out for a few turns, and being able to side in some staying power seems like a good idea for those situations

Thoughts?

by **mosc** » Sun Jun 24, 2012 7:07 pm UTC

I commend you for sticking with the deck, working through the concept, and tweaking your build. Few people have the patience to develop a deck as thoroughly. That said, infect is not going to win tournaments against competent players with mainstream decks. Vapor snag and snapcaster are often 4-of's in decks together and returning a buffed creature to your hand is just devastating in card and time advantage. I think green+blue or the all out speed green+black infect decks are slightly faster (read better) but you've tweaked your three color version for speed as well so there aren't many matchups where it would play much differently. You can see the speed difference when you have to play evolving wilds to smooth out your mana base. The more I look at your mana base, I think how well done it is especially with limited resources to run 3 colors in as fast a way as possible. That said, evolving wilds is the last thing you want to see in a speed deck.

Besides a strong recommendation to stick to 60 cards (and I think 24 lands with 4 of em inkmoths), I think tweaks and sideboard are more specific to your metagame and you seem well on your way to developing appropriate threats. The major tweak I would see is that when M13 comes out, rancor will be in standard. It should be a nice present to infect players. This will be their 4th printing so you should be able to get a hold of some. It's a clear 4-of superbuff for any infect deck. I also think it makes green much more of the meat in the infect deck making three-color even less attractive.

Building on a budget did a mono-black ramp deck into sorin+vengence for 2x10pt swing win combo recently. Mono-black big mana ramp could be tweaked to run other kills and can be built for cheap (uses a lot of scars block for ramping). More innestrad specific and perhaps more expensive, I've been fooling around with a black+white Sorin, LOI deck (lingering souls of course). Deathtouch+Lifelink weenies all around. The plainswalker is going for $18 or so now and needs to be a 4-of but maybe that's something else to think about? WB duals are $9 too, I guess the deck isn't super cheap. Just throwing out some ideas for other cheap decks out there.

by **b.i.o** » Sun Jun 24, 2012 11:49 pm UTC

Internal monologue from the MTGO AVR draft I just finished:
<first pack has an entreat the angels>
"Well, guess I'm playing white" (I got the miracle off 3 times)
<second pick, first pack has a druid's familiar>
"Guess I'm playing white/green"
<fifth pick, third pack has a goldnight commander.
"The fuck!?"

(Also had Emancipation Angel, Wolfir Avenger, Soul of the Harvest, Banishing Stroke, Blessings of Nature, and a lot of good 2/3 drops. Rather unsurprisingly, I went 3-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-1. My loss in the second round was because I kept a two-land hand with no forests and then drew all green creatures. My loss in the third was because I forgot a stonewright was soulbonded when declaring blockers.)

by **EdgarJPublius** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:55 am UTC

Yea, evolving wilds is probably unnecessary, I'm just a bit superstitious about running three colors without much in the way of color-fixing. I'll try it without the Evolving Wilds and Contagion Clasps and see what happens (may toss another Wild Defiance in there).

I used to be all about Blue/Black control style play, but it just doesn't feel right to me in the current meta, probably because control-aggro is dominant right now. I dunno, infect is taking back to my Onslaught-era Goblin days, combined with going back further to the old-school poison cards like Marsh Viper that I loved when I first started playing in 5th edition.

Maybe when Ravnica comes back I'll switch back (probably just in time for the meta to switch to aggressive aggro), or maybe my taste/playstyle has just changed while I've been away from the game for long.

by **Woopate** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:18 am UTC

Played my first perfect night at a sanctioned event tonight. 8 wins 0 losses, with a mayor of avabruk/cackling counterpart deck of my own design. Super excited.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jun 30, 2012 6:57 am UTC

FNM report:

Red/White Humans for days. played three different red/white Human decks (ok, one was red/white/green human werewolves) exactly the sort of deck I thought I had just trimmed my deck down to fight.

went 2 and 1 in the first match, mulliganned every game

Match 2 was the werewolves, again, mulliganned every game, went 1:2

Looked through my deck to see what the ever loving fuck was wrong, noticed a few out of place cards and realized that I had forgotten to remove some stuff I had been testing before getting the deck ready for fighting trim. Tried to fix it with the resources available, but I had switched my sideboard to be control-heavy when I thought I was slimming down my deck to be faster and there wasn't much I could do.

Match three, didn't mulligan every game, went 0:2 (more red/white humans)

Match four was Red/Black something, Vexing Devils and lots of burn. Bogged down badly if I took 4 to kill the Vexing Devils since the deck basically played out on turn three and had to top-deck after that. The deck I had last week would have trashed it, but I once again mulliganned every game and got fed garbage. Went 1:2 again.

Not quite my worst finish, but definitely the worst since I cut the deck down to less than seventy cards.

Oh well, Rancor is coming back soon, and Infect will be utterly ridiculous, I can live with that.

by **phlip** » Sun Jul 01, 2012 5:47 am UTC

So, at my local game shop for the last couple of weeks, we've been drafting the full block, AVR/DKA/ISD, rather than triple-AVR, since we're all mostly sick of the latter. And I have to say, it's actually pretty fun.

My main plan in the format is to go into Black early... on the basis that people are already ingrained to rate black cards poorly in AVR, so it's often wide open, and then once you get into DKA and ISD you pick up all the great stuff. I haven't forced it, but just by rating black higher than I would in trip-AVR on the basis of there being good black to come in the later packs means I've been in black to at least some extent every time we've drafted ADI, and it's ended up going really well. Culminating in last night, playing this mono black monstrosity and going 3-0.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 7:46 am UTC

M13 prerelease report:

No FNM this week due to the M13 pre-release.

This was my first 'sealed' event, and I have to say, it was a lot of fun, certainly a lot more fun than drafting (which I never really liked but did a lot anyway for some reason that escapes me now).

My pool was pretty well balanced. The only thing resembling a 'bombshell' would probably be the one Vampire Nighthawk, I also got a Sands of Delirium which I like a lot in theory, but it didn't get much play.

I could have easily gone Green/White (and in fact, built a deck on that basis out of my pool, but never used it), but the combination of Nighthawk and 2x Essence Scatter (and possibly my own personal bias) pushed me into Blue/Black control style, supported by Mind Sculpt some Mind Rot, a Jace's Phantasm and the Sands to make mill an alternate win-con.
Probably would have been better off ditching the mill which never actually went off, and maybe splashing some red (the Red in my pool didn't really have enough substance to play in a two-color deck).
I did get four rings, two black (Xathrid Ring) and two Green Ring of Kalonia and in hindsight, i should have gone Black/Green purely on the strength of those four rings.

Anyway, had a good time, went 1 and 2 in the first three matches.
I took match 1 pretty handily against the only deck I saw running white but no exalted. the other two matches were white + something and all of it exalted. Match 3 was close, but I lost in game 3 when I swung with everything to get my opponent down to 1, reasoning that there was pretty much no way they could get lethal on the board before I could swing again, and then out came Sublime Angel, which put their attack at exactly lethal damage when the exalted from Sublime Angel stacked with the exalted already on the board (somebody tell me why the hell multiple instances of exalted on one creature stack!?).
It was the only game I was able to get my Nighthawk out and still lost.

Match 4 was insane. My opponent was playing Blue/white with only a little bit of exalted. In two games, we managed to fight each other to a standstill. Game 1 went normally for the first few turns, until we were each at about fifteen life or so. Then it deadlocked, in the course of two turns, the field was reduced to a Fog Bank and an attacker stacked with enchantments on each side. After that, we were each mana flooded and ended up having to top-deck for something to break the stalemate. After an unbelievable number of turns of that, with maybe two or three spells played total, none of which managed to break the stalemate, he pulled a Stormtide Leviathan And since we had spent ten to fifteen minutes playing out all of our lands, he was actually able to play the thing and run me over. I kept expecting to hit my Sands of Delirium to deck him out with all of my mana, but after the game I found it on the bottom of my library.

Game 2 was even more epic. He started off strong with an Ajani Sunstriker and the White ring, which proceeded to beat me down for several turns. I got a few hits in, but just couldn't touch that Sustriker, and about ten minutes in, he had me at 2 and was at something ridiculous like 36. At that point, I got a small break in the form of Fog Bank which was able to block any further hits. I got a few swings in, but it was clear that I was just stalling and the game would be over soon. after a few turns of that, a minor miracle, one of my black rings. Not enough to get me off the defensive, but it gave me heart and a little bit more of a fighting chance. I got a few more swings in but it still wasn't looking good. Then got a much bigger miracle in the form of Vampire Nighthawk. I quickly stuck the ring on the Nighthawk and suddenly it was a whole different game. As I clawed my way back up, the Nighthawk gained a few more augmentations as trickses of the Trade and Dark Favor.

Even then, the comeback took time and turns, and he managed to get his Leviathan out again, but it was too little too late (hard to imagine an 8/8 unblockable leviathan being 'too little), the Ring had pushed Nighthawk over the edge into ludicrous territory. I managed to win game 2 with 19 life at almost the instant the clock ran out on the match.

Since we were both 1-2, and prizes were assigned by record, so that finishing 2-2 earned two prize packs (while 1-3 got nothing) He opted to concede game 3 to me (he said out of respect for my comeback in game 2) and I gave him one of my two prize packs.

All in all, tons of fun. This event made me long for Blue/Black control even while infect is still in standard, so it looks like I will be going back after-all. With luck I can swing some black infect and make a real go of combining my two loves for a brief period, but if not, I may have to start switching out decks every week to get my fix of both.

After the event I got a Rancor in trade, still shy of a playset, but I think the two green rings make up for it, possibly more than. Those things are seriously powerful, and I really wish I could have snagged some blue rings (Ring of Evos Isle) to go with my Blighted Agents, growing those things and being able to give them hexproof as needed is completely bonkers. I can only imagine what Blue/Black Control/Infect style with the rings and proliferation would look like.

There's another pre-release tomorrow with some slots still open that I may attend. This one will be a sealed two-headed giant which sounds like a lot of fun. If I do that, I'll probably skip out on the 'release' draft event next Friday. Actually, even if I don't make tomorrows event, I may skip the draft anyway (I am so done with drafting) but I would like one more chance to get a nice chunk of new cards without just forking out cash for a bunch of packs.

by **Azrael001** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 5:18 am UTC

I too went to the pre-release on Friday. I started well, but I lost the second game of round 3 and couldn't get my steam back. The guy was at 1 life, but had milled me heavily. I had two cards left when he top decked pacifism, just after I'd managed to whittle down his defenses. This forced a third game, which he also won.

I did however get a bunch of the cards I wanted for my double all the things deck, and I learned that the New Phyrexia stuff is still standard, so I can keep my Mirran Crusader and True Conviction, which help the doubling immensely. The deck is here, or in pure text:

Spoiler:

Also, Sublime Angel looks entertaining and cruel.

by **b.i.o** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:08 pm UTC

I also did a prerelease yesterday. I played a green-white "play creatures every turn and attack with them to win" deck and went 3-1, with the loss coming in round 3. I won the first game (off the back of a Planar Cleansing followed by two sentinel spiders, a serra angel, and a prized elephant), got completely mana screwed game 2 (kept a hand with 2 plains on the draw, didn't get another plains until turn 5, and got no forests at all). Game three, my first three (!) creatures got enchanted by pacifism. The fourth got killed by Divine Verdict, the fifth by the Divine Verdict he got back with Archaeomancer, and then the sixth was killed when he countered a pump spell I used on it.

I got ridiculously lucky with my packs. Opened a foil liliana in my sealed pool (which I couldn't play--my black was awful), and then an ajani in my prize packs.

by **Azrael001** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:56 pm UTC

Ajani is just so ridiculous. There shouldn't be such a thing as an auto-include for a colour.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:21 pm UTC

I ended up doing the 2HG pre-release event yesterday and had tons of fun. I didn't have a partner but met up with three guys who needed a fourth to form two teams.

My pool was ridiculous. I ended up pulling a Liliana, a Vampire Nighthawk, Krenko, Mob Boss, a Blue Ring and Ajani. My partner pulled a White Ring, Crusader of Odric two Primal Huntbeasts and Rancor.
My partner was relatively new to magic and said he preferred white, so I set him up with Ajani and helped him build a white/green deck.

I was torn between Black/Red and Black/Blue, but went with my own theory about the power of rings in limited and decided to sleeve up Blue, leaving the Red ready though in case blue didn't work out.

Game 1 was against my partner's friends. They got an early lead in board presence, but we managed to stall with Fog Bank and Safe Passage until we could get some blockers out. Lilliana came out shortly after that and they focused all their attention on her without doing much good. Whilte they were pre-occupied trying to kill Lilliana, we got some solid hits in, and managed to finish the game using Liliana's -3 to sneak in lethal damage. They never managed to hit our life total.

Game two was rough, neither of us were drawing very good, and the only flyer I could get out (a Wind Drake) was pacified almost immediately. We lost that one.
My luck with opening packs continued though, and I pulled an Elderscale Wurm from my participation pack.

Game three was pretty fun, this time Ajani came out early and put in some serious work, dispensing those sweet, sweet +1/+1 counters. We developed major board presence while one of our opponents who was playing Black/White struggled to get out any white mana. They came back a bit, developing some defenders and bringing us down with a lot of direct damage hits, but they only spent a little effort going after Ajani and we were able to use his -3 to good effect, giving a creature flying and doublestrike to get a lethal hit past their blockers.

Our final opponents had done quite well for themselves, and my partner was fairly intimated by how they had trashed his friends and another the team that had beat us in round two in earlier games. There was some idle talk of scooping in exchange for splitting the prizes, but I squashed it as best I could.

They had managed a mono-Blue mill deck with Jace, and a Black/Red aggro deck with lots of cheap evasive hitters like Tormented Soul, Dragon Hatchling as well as at least one Vampire Nighthawk.

The Black/Red side developed two tormented souls early, attaching some aura's to boost their attack strength and get in some major hits while her partner in Blue kept us in check with well placed Essence Scatters and Negates mixed with some Mind Sculpt and a Vedalken Entrancer, milling out my Vampire Nighthawk and Liliana.
I managed to keep their vampire nighthawk off the field with a well-timed Duress and a Vile Rebirth to exile it and get out another creature on my side.
The game went back and forth for a while, they pulled out a stuffy doll that did a good job shutting down our ground pounders, and got in one good hit with a Dragon Hatchling before I drew a Fog Bank, and we got Ajani out. However, Ajani didn't last long against the unblockable Tormented Souls. My partner badly wanted to save him with a Fog he had in hand, but I knew that the situation we were in, that fog might end up more important than keeping Ajani out for at best, one more turn.

After that, the game got ultra-tense, my partner had been mildly mana screwed for a bit and kept asking my advice on how to commit what little resources he had. He still had the Fog, and also a safe passage, as well as second huntbeast (the first was still on the field with a +1/+1 from Ajani) he could play the huntbeast, but wouldn't have enough mana for Safe Passage. I told him we needed the bodies, and could still use the Fog if necessary.

Then, they put Sleep on me, taking my fogbank out so they could get a hit in with the Dragon Hatchling. At this point, I almost had to actively restrain my partner from casting Fog while the damage was counted out. We went down to four life and I told him to save the Fog.
On our turn, I put Sleep on the Black/Red aggro side, blue hadn't developed much other than stuffy doll, which I summoned, then essence Scattered, and a few chumps. My partner swung with everything, killing off the rest of Blue's field and bringing them down to five. Black/Red tried to use a Volcanic Geyser at the end of our turn for lethal, but my partner had all his mana available and laid down Safe Passage. On their next turn, there was little they could do other than scramble to get out more blockers and try to hit some of our creatures with removal, but critically, the Beast's were immune. On our turn, my partner swung in for everything again, this time, there was only two blockers, which was not enough. We won with the Fog still in reserve. It was extremely epic.

Opening prize Packs, my luck wouldn't stop. I opened another Ajani, two red rings and a second blue ring, another Vampire Nighthawk, a Rancor Mutilate, Reverberate and Talrand, Sky Summoner.

And I wasn't the only one so lucky enough to pull four mythics that night, someone on another 3:1 team pulled two Nicol Bolas!

by **LLCoolDave** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:52 pm UTC

EdgarJPublius wrote:I managed to keep their vampire nighthawk off the field with a well-timed Duress and a Vile Rebirth to exile it and get out another creature on my side.

Duress doesn't hit Vampire Nighthawk! (*cough* cheater *cough*) It's one of those common prerelease mistakes to make. I'm sure plenty of creatures got acidic slimed last weekend as well.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 8:30 pm UTC

You are correct on Duress. I must have misremembered. The other team was on top of my partner for some minor rules mistakes, I doubt they would have let me Duress an invalid target. Nighthawk may have hit the field and then I Murdered it around the time I Duressed something else (possibly a Disentomb or Rise from the Grave)

Actually, I'm sure their Nighthawk hit the field, because they used it to hit Ajani before I could get my Fog Bank out or Murder it. Ajani had too many counters for just two Tormented Souls, but we had no flying defense at that point.

I did have an Acidic Slime hit one of my creatures the day before, but it was a Chronomaton, so a legal target

by **Woopate** » Tue Jul 10, 2012 7:22 am UTC

I won packs at the midnight release, with a blue-red talrand control deck (now looking into making it a standard deck but my snapcasters are expensive.) Then on sunday I pulled talrand again and two invocations, so I ran him with black instead of red for something different. Big mistake. 2 wins 3 losses. After I pulled the black out and put red in (krenko, slumbering dragon, magmaquake and 2 krenko's commands were the only good red I pulled) turns out I could have handily trounced those who beat me (I did in fun games) had I gone red again. 9 bonus packs total (6 packs for the score and one of each of Innistrad block as a raffle).

I'm gonna mill win by o-ringing a manabarb and worldfire this summer if it kills me.

by **b.i.o** » Wed Jul 11, 2012 11:01 pm UTC

I have a really bad sense of how my draft decks are going to do. Just drafted what I thought was my worst draft deck in weeks (I was basically drafting four colors for the first two packs) and I ended up going 3-0 without a single lost game.

by **Bigtraine** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 3:25 pm UTC

I haven't had a chance to play with M13 yet, but I have been thinking about the set alot I am starting to think Thragtusk might be the best new (aka non-rancor) card in the set. That card is pure value. I like it in R/G mid-range decks (Huntmaster on 4, Thragtusk on 5). I think we could see some B/G "Rock" style decks - can you imagine playing a disciple of Bolas on a Thragtusk (Draw 5, gain 10 life, get a 3/3 and a 2/1 dude for 2 cards and 9 mana). Restoration Angel is huge right now, and there isnt a better target in Standard than Thragtusk.

His biggest problem is that he is competing with some other really good 5 drops: Silverheart, Sigarda, Zealous Conscripts, Vorapede (I guess) and Thundermaw Hellkite. But Thragtusk is only a single green mana, making him easily splashable, and for any deck looking to do more than smash with giant Silverhearts I think he will be the play. And there is no reason they can't co-exist together for that matter - you can bond them up, and if the Thragtusk dies, soulbond the token to the Silverheart.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:13 am UTC

I'm definitely gonna be running black/blue infect/control at my next FNM, but I can't decide which black infect creatures to play (other than Hand of the Praetors), or whether to slide some green in there (maybe just some hinterland harbors) for Rancor as a potential alternate wincon.

by **bigglesworth** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 7:39 am UTC

I just found Cockatrice. It's very interesting, but what do people tend to do for two-sided cards?

by **Bigtraine** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 3:12 pm UTC

Here is my FNM report for the week. I made the boneheaded mistake of not realizing M13 was legal until about 1 minute before the tourney started so I definitely missed out on some opportunities there. I only managed to get one M13 card into the deck. I went 4-0-1 with an intentional draw in round 5 (split for 1st and 2nd). I played a R/G aggro deck (decklist below). There were 28 people present.

Decklist:

Creatures: (27)

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Strangleroot Geist
3 Borderland Ranger
1 Champion of Lampholt
1 Yava, Nature's Herald
1 Druid's Familiar
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
3 Zealous Conscripts
2 Wolfir Silverheart

Spells: (5)

3 Bonfire of the Damned
2 Green Sun's Zenith

Artifacts: (4)

1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Body and Mind
2 Sword of War and Peace

Land: (24)

4 Rootbound Crag
1 Copperline Gorge
2 Kessig Wolf Run
5 Mountain
12 Forest

Sideboard: (15)

2 Ancient Grudge
4 Pillar of Flame
1 Arc Trail
1 Zealous Conscripts
2 Wolfir Silverheart
4 Incinerate

Round 1 vs. Mono-Black Zombies (2-0):

This was a nice kid, but we was just playing the zombie event deck. It did have some nice cards in it (Geralf's Messenger, Gravecrawler, Blood Artist) but it wasn't tuned enough. Plus, he hit some mana snags and made a couple of play errors. An easy start to the tournament, but I did try and make it fun for the other guy and afterwards we talked zombies a bit (since that is my other main deck lately).

Round 2 vs. Wolf-Run Ramp (2-1):

I lost game 1 despite stealing a Primeval Titan and swinging with it. He had gained too much life off Glimmerpost and Huntmasters along the way. I had very strong starts in games two and three (T1 mana dork, T2 sword, T3 equip and swing) that he couldnt recover from. This is one of the better players in our meta so I felt good to play him early and get a win.

Round 3 vs. R/W Artifacts (2-0):

I played another nice kid in round 3, but he was 1-1 and had gotten paired up. He was playing some kind of R/W artifact deck. I am not sure if it was combo or just aggro. He played semblance anvils and mana myr and Myr Battlesphere but that is all that I saw. I stomped him pretty hard both games. Game two was expecially brutal as I sided in alot of spot kill and artifact hate.

Round 4 vs. Naya Pod (2-1):

This was a really fun round. The kid I was playing against is kind of new to the game, converting from YuGiOh, but he is really sharp and is going to be a great player in the near future. I really enjoy playing against him because he is always pleasant, and he takes time to figure out what he thinks are the best plays, and is constantly trying to improve. He took game 1 from me on the power of two Restoration Angels with Blade Splicers backed up Birthing Pod up to Inferno Titan and overwhelming me.

In game 2, I got him down to 2 before he stabilized. He ended up with a Nearhearth Pilgrim and a Wolfir Silverheart (bonded) but passed the turn to me. I had enough creatures up to kill him team if he attacked, but it would have killed my duded as well. In his shoes I would have attacked and gained the life and effectively started over. I was literally sitting on about 14 outs on my draw, but missed them all. He durdled around a bit and eventually podded the Silverheart into an Inferno Titan, killed some of my mana dorks and passed. I wiffed on my draw. He attacked in, gained 9 more life, and I was able to trade with his Titan. I spend a couple more turns whiffing while he rebuilds up with a pod. Eventually I miracle a bonfire and take the win.

In game 3, I got a good aggressive start and put him on the defensive. When he looked close to stabilizing, I hard-cast a Bonfire for 2 and wiped most his board, and cleaned up a turn or so later.

Round 5 vs. Mono White Human Aggro (draw / 0-2):

We decided to draw and split the prize. We played for fun anyway, and I am glad I split because I ended up losing 0-2. In game 1 he got a Mirran Crusader with an Angelic Destiny. GG for me. In game two I got stuck on 4 mana with lethal in my hand if I could have drawn a mana source over about 3 turns, but I didnt and thems the breaks sometimes.

I am going to modify the deck a bit with M13 and see how it plays. My plan is to make the following changes:

-1 Champion of Lampholt
-2 Green Sun Zenith
-1 Druid Familiar
+1 Borderland Ranger
+2 Thundermaw Hellkite
+1 Yeva, Nature's Herald
-4 Swords
+4 Rancor

And if I can ever get my hands on a fourth Bonfire, that is going in for sure!

by **Kolko** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 5:24 pm UTC

I drafted this last night for my first ever FNM and draft. I managed to go 3-0-0 and win my table

by **mosc** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 4:04 pm UTC

bigglesworth wrote:I just found Cockatrice. It's very interesting, but what do people tend to do for two-sided cards?

you create the flip side as a token. Cockatrice recognizes the name and puts on the card image correctly. Then you usually just move one to the side and the other to the area where your creatures are to reflect which side it's on.

by **bigglesworth** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 5:36 pm UTC

How very convenient.

Also, care to help a first-time deck-builder? This is what I came up with based on the casual deck that I used last time I played the game IRL, and what I know from Duels of the Plainswalkers. The idea is to gather together a large creature from Arcbound modular creatures, and use a whispersilk cloak to push it through to win.

Spoiler:

by **mosc** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:09 pm UTC

Looks like a modern format deck? (citadel but no seat of the synod means modern not legacy to me) I can't imagine playing a deck like that without cranial plating. If you're not in it for pure speed (which it appears you're not from the mana leaks), master of etherium would be one of the most powerful cards in your deck if it were in there. You could also spend some money to add a few mox opals. Other amazingly powerful cards to consider are blinkmoth nexus (and it's cousin inkmoth nexus, though generally not as good a fit in an artifact deck) and vault skirge (with or without access to black mana).

The most popular version of the deck centers around arcbound ravager and disciple of the vault. It would have 4 memnites, 4 ornithopters, 4 mox opals, and other faster artifacts. Cranial plating is a solid backup win condition. Other variants will feature UB with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas trying to combo into his ultimate with a bunch of cheap artifacts. Another (standard legal if you want to go that route) features mono-white tempered steel with cards like porcelain legionnaire, vault skirge (take the 2), memnite, glint hawk, etc.

I have a more casual deck I play that centers on counter generation. I run a package of everflowing chalices, contagion clasps, and voltaic keys, even a pair of lux canons. It also has the skulpters, workers, and steel overseers along with the already mentioned masters and blinkmoths.

I would not run Arcbound Overseer and supporting pieces (stinger, crusher). It's very slow. Workers are so cheap that they're awesome on their own. Whispersilk Cloak is a gimmic and inferior to cranial plating. Override is a terrible card in all decks. If you have lots of artifacts or not. Dissipate, just for example, is too similar to cast in your deck and is a hard counter+. There's probably better options than dissipate. Force Spike might be what you're looking for but it's not modern legal. Vapor snag might be more helpful than a counter anyway. I realize the overseer is kind of the theme of the deck but he's too expensive and ponderous for even very slow and casual forms of magic. Artifact decks generally rely on speed and synergy. If you do want to keep the overseer, you should strongly consider playing mana ramp cards like everflowing chalice.

by **bigglesworth** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:26 pm UTC

It's a "Mirrodin block plus Cathedral" deck

But thanks, that's all very interesting.

If I were to build something for this current block, what types of decks are out there? A few archetypal ones.

by **b.i.o** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:30 am UTC

The cube draft is so much fun. I have a ridiculous blue/white/artifact deck that draws fucktons of cards (I think something like 50% of my nonland cards have some way of drawing or fetching more cards for me) and has a masticore. Also a platinum angel. And a top. And an enlightened tutor.

by **b.i.o** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 11:38 pm UTC

There are few things more satisfying than beating three delver players in a row to win a tournament.

I'm going to be really sad when honor of the pure and hero of bladehold rotate out.

by **Azrael001** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 2:54 am UTC

I've only ever had one Hero of Bladehold, but every time I play it it makes the bad people go away. Especially with Honor of the Pure out. Speaking of, I've got something like nine of the damned things. I got a playset of the M10 ones, and I just kept getting more.

by **sam_i_am** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 3:29 pm UTC

This Is a deck that I play to play in today's FNM(although it's not an exact list anymore) It went 3-1 Last week, and I'm hopeful to do well this week to(especially considering that there's a Grand Prix within driving distance that the REALLY competitive players will be going to)

by **b.i.o** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 10:42 pm UTC

Azrael001 wrote:I've only ever had one Hero of Bladehold, but every time I play it it makes the bad people go away. Especially with Honor of the Pure out. Speaking of, I've got something like nine of the damned things. I got a playset of the M10 ones, and I just kept getting more.

I had one game in another tournament where I had three of them in hand, and my opponent had a grave titan out. We kept alternating me playing hero, him blocking when I attacked (killing my hero), and his tokens dying when they blocked my newly generated ones, and then me playing another hero, and then him not attacking so he could block...and so on.

But yes, usually if I can get one out and make it stick, I end the game in 1-2 attacks. A couple of other tokens, a couple of anthems, and a hero easily hits for 20+.

by **EdgarJPublius** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:45 am UTC

FNM report:

Wow, I knew it was going to be a 'green summer' with the reprint of Rancor, but I didn't expect the amount of infect I saw tonight.
I ended up playing two infect decks, and just about every game around me had at least one infect player in it.
The cards for my Blue/Black infect/control deck didn't turn up in time, so I ran the latest version of my Green/Blue deck, with 4 Rancors and three Green Rings.

Went 2 and 2.

Match one was against a guy who was just getting back in to magic and only brought a legacy deck. He bought a Scars era event deck (seriously, where do they all come from? I thought the one I bought was the last one the store had in stock, and that was back when Dark Ascension was still new) that was some sort of blue-black thing. Didn't see much other than some plague myr and a contagion clasp, I won both games pretty handily, then we played with his legacy deck for the remainder, it was a fast red/black burn deck that killed me once and then I won the next game.

Match two was against a brutal goblin deck. In game one I managed to deal nine damage on turn four with wild defiance plus titanic growth, but he did eleven damage the next turn with a goblin chieftain and some hefty burn to back it up, taking me down. The next game made me think of what my opponents must feel when my deck really hits its stride. rapid fire brutality with not much I could do.

Match three was intense. Going up against a blue/white/black control running an absurd number of counters. In game one he was practically playing draw-go style. Luckily he didn't hit enough land to do too much damage and I was eventually able to sneak in enough damage with the hilarious inkmoth+rancor combo after he played out a pair of Stonehorns.
After that I sided in some control of my own, opting for Corrupted Resolve and Contagion Clasp to break through his stalling.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any of it in game 2 and was blown out by a venser+stonehorn combo where venser flickered the stonehorn every turn so I couldn't get a combat combat phase at all. Even then, I stalled as long as I could, eating his creatures whenever he tried to attack, but eventually he got two Venser emblems out and just exiled all my creatures.

Game three went all my way, a quick Assault Strobe plus Titanic growth and it was all over.

Match four was pretty interesting. Went up against a Blue/Black infect running lots of removal. I managed to sneak in a game one win by equipping the green ring on an Ichorclaw Myr for the trample. The next two games were pretty intense, but I had a hard time getting creatures past the doom-blades, murders and etc., and wasn't drawing any Corrupted Resolve to make it stop. Did have a good moment in game 2 where he duressed me on turn one and my hand was all creatures and land, and again in game three when he duressed me with two Wild Defiance in my hand and no other targets. Still, the last two games were close, I think game 2 finished 7 poison counters to ten, and game three with eight or nine poison counters to ten.

In hindsight, the green rings aren't all that useful, I'm only running four green creatures (my glistener elves) And they don't really come out until turn three, so only a few turns to grow anything before I've typically either won or lost anyway. the trample was nice, but I think if I play this deck in the future, I'll replace the rings with some Unnatural Predation for trample instead. I'm still waffling on the red. Those Assault Strobes can be a game winner if they hit, and I have 4 red/green dual lands now so they don't hurt my mana base much, but I can't help think that it'd be better to run more green creatures, or maybe Ranger's Guile instead.

by **b.i.o** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 12:57 pm UTC

Yeah I can't really see any of the rings working in standard. They're really useful in limited because there's a good chance you'll have 2+ turns to build your creature up safely and there aren't too many unsummon effects, but the green one at least seems almost strictly worse than rancor in standard, especially while vapor snag is a thing. I think equipment has to be really good (swords/runechanter's pike good) to be viable.

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