Monday, September 22, 2014

This One Goes to 11: Cranking Up Thada Mono-Blue Eldrazi

It's been a couple of weeks now since I turned in my drive to the local gaming store for a keyboard and a monitor. Moving to MTGO to get my Commander fix has been a good experience. It may end up just being a break, but we'll see.

One great part of moving to MTGO has been the ability to play a lot more games in the same amount of time I spent driving, waiting for a table to open up, shuffling, and all the other "stuff" that goes along with playing Commander in person with semi-strangers. Who else loves it when someone yells, "judge!" in the middle of a turn?

Thada Adel, AcquisitorThassa, God of the Sea

I am a big fan of my mono-Blue Eldrazi and Artifacts decks called, Gods, Robots, and Monsters. It started as a Braids, Conjurer Adept deck, but now Thada or sometimes Thassa takes her squishy place. I was trying to figure out what to build on MTGO and realized that even though my collection isn't identical between the real world and the virtual world, it was similar enough to basically build the Thada deck.

Although there are some big differences in individual card choices, the structure of the deck is the same with cards that play the same roles in almost every slot. In fact, having a different card pool to work with made the deck building experience interesting. I came up short in a few areas, but after some searching found suitable replacements that wouldn't break the bank.

I added $5 worth of bot credits and tried to fill in everything that I was missing. It helped considerably that Thada was $0.30. Thassa was out of my price range, clocking in at over $6 by her lonesome. But, I was lucky enough to have a Sensei's Diving Top from before it was a thing. That, along with Crystal Ball and Darksteel Pendant filled in for a few cards I was missing. The other big difference is that the ramp, card draw, and even creatures for my online deck ended up looking different than the cardboard version.

This is where things get weird.

Stormtide LeviathanTromokratis

The specific creatures don't matter too much. Anything big and with a cool effect is enough to get the job done. So while I don't have the bomber brothers of Ulamog and Kozilek in my MTGO version of the deck like I do in real life, Stormtide Leviathan and Tromokratis are still darn scary. And totally affordable at $0.05 each.

Palinchron

Quick aside to talk about price differences. I was surprised to find that Palinchron, a card I've been looking for in cardboard for a long time, was $0.05 online and readily available. This was true of several other cards where picking them up for my MTGO deck is no big deal. Many of the staples commanded higher prices, though. Again, I was lucky to have Tezzeret the Seeker from back in the day in my MTGO collection, a card that I still haven't picked up in cardboard.

Anyway, I'm to the point where the overall mix of cards in the deck is what matters now. It's not really about the cards themselves, but the balance of the different types of cards in the deck that makes the difference. For me at least, finding that right mix comes with played the deck - a lot. Something I couldn't do in real life. Moving to MTGO gave me the opportunity to quickly test a different mix of cards.

Did I need more card drawing? More ramp? Less lands?

Switching a handful of cards out between games is simple online. And playing more games in less time also makes all the difference when you only have so much time to throw at testing. Some things that seem to work on paper and may even work from time to time in an actual game become clear that they really don't work all that well when you play several games in a row.

It That Betrays

The deck doesn't really go to 11. It actually goes to 12. The biggest spell is the deck is It That Betrays at 12 mana. It's relatively easy to ramp into 12 mana if no one interferes. Plus, there are also several ways to cast things for free.

But what I realized by playing more games in a row is that the deck can go even bigger. It really can. And it probably should. Somewhere around turn 10, everyone has been playing for about 20-25 minutes each. There's a timer in MTGO, so you can watch it. That means that turn 10 is about an hour and a half total, give or take.

An hour and a half is about right for a pick-up game of Commander.

If you have a lot more time available, then you will have time to play two games. Otherwise, one game is about the length of a movie. So, build your deck to do its thing by turn 10. Do this, and you're doing everyone a favor. On turn 10, take a big turn and try to win.

If you don't play on MTGO and want to see how things works, put an extra die by yourself and tick it up every turn. Watch what happens as you play and get to turn 10. Unless there's some rules question that comes up and drags the game out while everyone argues, you'll be about an hour and a half into the game and hoping that someone has the guts to try to end it.

Genesis WaveCraterhoof Behemoth

It's not really about comboing off, though that is certainly one option. It's about making your turn 10 into the biggest turn you can. Casting a Big Genesis Wave, Craterhoof into an army of guys, Rise of the Dark Realms, back-to-back Army of the Damned, all that stuff is big and splashy, and can end the game quickly without a combo.

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur

In other words, cheating Jin-Gitaxis into play on turn 3 and making him stick behind a wall of counterspells probably isn't a good time. But! Casting Jin-Gitaxis on turn 10 when everyone else has already run out of gas seems perfectly reasonable. Is it a coincidence that Jin is 10 mana? Maybe not.









Thursday, September 11, 2014

Khans of Tarkir Spoiler: Butcher of the Horde, Kheru Lich Lord, See the Unwritten, Hooded Hydra, Empty the Pits, Utter End, Banners, Refuges

(Don't forget that you can see a visual spoiler of the new cards as they are revealed over at MythicSpoiler.com)

Keeping track of the new demons in Magic is a hobby of mine. We have a couple of new ones in Khans. Check this guy out: Butcher of the Horde.



A 5/4 flyer for 4 mana is a good deal, even if it is in three colors. The triple color combinations are going to throw off a lot of card evaluations. Even with all of the new color-fixing, getting three colors consistently is no walk in the park. I like my demons like I like my coffee: black. This demon is a bunch of colors. His ability is in-theme for demons, so that's nice.


Kheru Lich Lord, See the Unwritten,



I like cards that let me play stuff for free. Bonus points if it's random. Hey, I like spinning the wheel! Kheru would be sweet as a Commander, but alas he is not legendary. Still, if he's in your colors you can get extra mileage of your creatures. See the Unwritten feels "hobbled." Cards like Genesis Wave have a much bigger top end. But we only get one Genesis Wave, right?

I takes what I can gets.

Army of the Damned

Haymakers are what makes Commander fun, for me at least. Empty the Pits is one of those cards. Like Army of the Damned, it can give you a swarm of Zombies. It's awesome because it's an instant. For flavor reasons, Zombies have been coming into play tapped for a little while now. Thematically, I like it. But, it means waiting around for the clawing and digging Zombies to get up through the graves. Unlike in the movies, your opponents don't stand there, slack-jawed, while the Zombies come to life. With Empty the Pits, you can summon your Zombie army just before you untap. Evil.

Hooded Hydra



Dat art.

Lots of the art in Magic is questionable. It's gotten better over the years, but every once in a while there's a picture on a card that's just so damn cool. Hooded Hydra is one of those. The way all the heads are turned, like it just found it's prey. Woah.

Lightning BoltGiant Growth

Green creatures have also gotten pretty crazy over the years. It started a long time ago. Red got Lightning Bolt and Green got Giant Growth. All things being equal, you could cast Lightning Bolt as long as you had a Red mana. Giant Growth required a Green mana, but it also required a creature. So, to get the same amount of damage through, you needed a creature to target and that creature needed a way to get through.

If you only got to choose one spell for your deck, it would be Lightning Bolt. It's less restrictive. Even though Giant Growth can theoretically "do more" to save your creature in a fight, Bolt gets the job done with less fuss. (Besides, a well-timed Lightning Bolt can save your creature in a lot of situations, too.)

Shock

Things were out of balance. They knew it. They printed Shock. Effectively, they were saying, direct damage spells with no restrictions need to be "slower" and less versatile. That worked for a while. But Green still felt underpowered. I remember winning a small, local tournament with a mono-Green deck back in the day and feeling like a god. It was a big deal because Green was a joke.

As time marched forward, Green got better designed cards. The cards feel "more Green" now. Look at Hooded Hydra. It scales with how much mana you have. It leaves behind snakes when it dies. And it has tricks.

You know what it doesn't have? Deathtouch.

It looks like it should have Deathtouch, but there isn't room on the card for anything else.

It does have Morph, though. I can't wait for the confusion to begin. For a game with as many rules as Magic has, Morph is in the running for the most complicated. Explaining it and understanding it are relatively easy. Using it properly is tricky.

I'm not saying the card isn't cool. It's damn cool. I just would have traded Morph for Deathtouch. Cleaner card. More flavor.

Utter End




















Oloro needed another way to deal with pesky permanents. Yeah, that's it. Oh, and look! A promo. Hell, it's even an instant. It can't target lands, but it does exile the target. Compare to Vindicate, Oblation, and Mortify. Pick your poison.

Banners







Color-fixing at common, one for each three-color combination. Can be turned in to draw a card. It's not super-exciting, but I'll take it.

Refuges



Okay, these aren't technically "refuges" by name, but they are lands that come into play tapped, tap for two colors, and gain you a life when they enter the battlefield. Slow lands aren't my thing, but these are at common and do color-fix. Plus, there's one for each two-color combination. The names they used on these lands are impressive and evocative of the areas they are supposed to represent. If they had reprinted true dual lands, these are what I would have wanted them to be named.