Average Commander: Cheap Traxos

While I haven't had the opportunity to play much Commander lately, I have been interested to see what's changed in my beloved "cheap" Traxos deck.

As a quick reminder, EDHRec.com has the option to return the "average" deck for a specific Commander and can be sorted to show only the bottom 10% or "cheap" version of the average deck. That's what I play for Traxos: the deck that is the average of all of the decks in the database at the bottom 10% of the cost curve. Click here for the current cheap (budget) average.

I last updated this list way back at the beginning of April 2021. Since then, 32 more decks have been added to the database at the bottom 10% of the curve. Let's see what changes the crowd has made to Traxos.

Creature Changes

• Out --> In
• Lodestone Golem --> Brass Squire
• Artisan of Kozilek --> Ornithopter of Paradise
• Scrapyard Recombiner --> Shimmer Myr

These changes all make the deck a bit faster. There is a lot of equipment in the list, so the Brass Squire makes sense. Artisan was the previous top end card and I found it stranded in my hand quite a bit. Because there is so much focus on Traxos, the deck close to being a glass cannon. Shimmer Myr helps with timing the threats.

Colorless Changes

• Out --> In
• Warping Wail --> Titan's Presence
• Gruesome Slaughter --> Introduction to Annihilation

Warping Wail replaced Titan's Presence in an earlier list, so this is a return for the removal spell. Introduction to Annihilation is a newer card and in this deck does a lot of what Gruesome Slaughter would do at a lower cost and with a different drawback. There just aren't that many big creatures in the deck to leverage Gruesome Slaughter.

Artifact Changes

• Out --> In
• Blinkmoth Urn --> Blackblade Reforged
• Darksteel Ingot --> Sol Ring
• Forsaken Monument --> Ghostfire Blade
• Golden Egg --> Eye of Vecna
• Fleetfeather Sandals --> Hero's Blade
• Mirror Shield --> Moonsilver Key
• Sword of Vengeance --> Nettlecyst
• Cliffhaven Kitesail --> Wastes

Sol Ring has finally been reprinted enough times to start showing up in these "cheap" budget lists. Otherwise, equipment with "blade" in its name is a huge for the updated list. Eye of Vecna is an efficient way to trigger the Traxos untap trigger and draw some cards. Moonsilver Key is an interesting tutor effect in this list. Nettlecyst plays double-duty as a creature and then as a huge threat equipment. This change bumps up the land count with an additional Wastes. With some different choices for the ramp slots this wouldn't be needed, but who can argue with the wisdom of the crowds?

Land Changes

• Out --> In
• Mishra's Factory --> Urza's Factory 
• Sunscorched Desert --> Guildless Commons
• Gargoyle Castle --> Buried Ruin

Guildless Commons seems like a fine 1.5 land budget replacement. I'm not sure about cutting Mishra's Factory for Urza's Factory. I've been in situations where either land would have been good after a board wipe or when not drawing a threat. I would have cut Mage-Ring Network and kept both.

All in all, the deck's cost stayed about the same at around $36 through TCGPlayer Direct (as of today). That's not bad for a complete Commander deck that is capable of smashing face. The deck does lack reach and will almost certainly lose once it gets behind. Fitting in more budget card draw could help. Otherwise, anything that takes Traxos offline puts a hurt on this deck. But if you are looking for something fun, cheap, and quick, this is the deck for you!

Old School MTG: Colorless Candelabra Shops

This deck is based on a deck I saw in a Timmy the Sorcerer video on YouTube by Anne J called "Big Boys (Don't Cry)." You can see one of the game play videos by clicking here. 

Anne J's version is for SWE rules, so I was able to make a few changes. I also didn't like the way the Jalum Tomes worked in that list, so I switched them for Jayemdae Tomes. I'm guessing Anne J was using the Jalum Tomes to filter cards to get Tron online as soon as possible. I haven't needed to worry about that since I can run all four copies of Mishra's Workshop under the rules where I play.

The deck is silly. It's either explosive and does crazy things right away or it doesn't do much. It's also easy to disrupt by anyone packing Disenchant, Shatter, etc. So, basically every deck I run into. But when it works, it's spectacular!

The sideboard can be transformational, turning the deck into a parfait Vise deck. Winter Orb, Black Vise, Howling Mine, Icy Manipulator, and Relic Barrier can give a lot of decks headaches and attacks from a different angle.

Click here to test it out on TappedOut.com if you want to see how explosive it can be with the right openers.

Eric's Simple Guide to Casual MTG Deck Construction

 

Here's a simple way to construct your casual deck!

Many of us play MTG across a wide range of formats, but if you're new to building a deck from scratch or you're looking for a way to build a deck for casual spell-slinging, give this guide a try. The idea here is to build a deck that "plays to the table." Your games will be interactive and revolve around creature combat. Of course you can make these decks "better." That's not the point. Instead, think of this as your second deck, the deck you use between rounds at a tournament.

General Deck Construction Guidelines

As you build your deck, lay it out on the table as demonstrated above. Think of your deck being in 4 parts: mana sources, creatures, support spells, and card advantage.

Put in 24 mana sources. It should fill up the entire left side of your deck. Keep your land count high, but throw in a few non-land mana sources too if you have them.

Next, put in 20 creatures. Vary the mana costs so that you have creatures at 1-2 mana, 3-4 mana, and 5+ mana.

Now, put in 12 support spells. These are non-creature spells that help your creatures do damage. Removal, evasion, bounce, or counter spells are all good choices for this part of your deck.

Finally, put in 4 card advantage spells. These can be spells that draw you cards right away or give you access to more cards over time.

Deck Construction Do's and Don'ts

If you are building your deck for a tournament, all bets are off. Build your deck to win! However, if you are playing a casual game of MTG and want to have some give and take, consider these deck construction tips.

First, the DON'Ts.

• DON'T build a land destruction deck.
• DON'T build a discard deck.
• DON'T build a hard control deck.
• DON'T build a combo deck.

Now, the DOs.

• DO build a deck that wins with creatures and combat damage.
• DO build a deck that has a variety of spells and creatures.
• DO build a deck with synergistic cards that create incremental value.

That's it! If you follow these simple deck construction guidelines, you will end up with a casual deck that plays out over a series of turns with a focus on combat damage. You'll notice that the games are interactive and have time to develop. This method allows each color to shine with creatures and support spells that bring a unique flavor to the match-ups. Give it a try!

F.A.Q.

I can't use counter spells, discard, or land destruction?! Those are my favorite things!

You can use all of those things, but they should not be the focus of your deck. Those spells will all fit in the 12 support slots. However, for many casual players all three of those strategies quickly become "unfun." Having a few discard spells in your list is one thing. Having all 12 slots devoted to it is something else.

Do I have to strictly follow the guidelines? For example, can I put in fewer creatures and more non-creature spells?

Of course you can, but the further you deviate from these guidelines, the more your deck will naturally shift away from something casual. By sticking to the guidelines, it forces you to build a certain type of deck, one that is more focused on creature combat and requires the board to develop.

Don't these guidelines just make it so that everyone is playing a mid-range deck?

Essentially, yes. You can lower the curve and build an aggressive burn deck, for example. You can increase the curve and play a more defensive control deck. But yes, decks built using these guidelines are almost forced to be somewhere along the continuum of a mid-range style deck. Again, this is all about playing a casual game of MTG where a board develops and creature combat is the focus.

Does this mean I can't play a combo deck?

Don't build a combo deck for casual games. There are exceptions to every rule, but most casual players do not enjoy watching you figure out the best way to kill them over a series of infinite turns. Instead, if you want to scratch that combo itch, find strong synergies between cards that can give you an incremental advantage.

The End of an Era

Do I still love MTG? Sure, I do.

MTG has been a big part of my life for more than 25 years. I've met friends, traveled, competed, stayed up way too late, collected cards, made trades, and agonized over how many lands is optimal in my deck list more times than I can count. I've spent hours organizing trade binders, cracking booster packs, and watching MTG matches late into the night. Heck, this blog has several hundred posts!

When Commander was new, it was a heck of a thing. It was a social format that opened up tons of deck building possibilities. I like big spells. The Commander format let me play almost all of them. And I did. I built tons of Commander decks, too many. I built Commander cubes. I went way down the rabbit hole on foils and foreign cards and signatures. I had a lot of fun.

But they broke it.

Well, they broke it for me. You may be having a great time with it and that's awesome. But for me, once they started designing cards for the format, a lot of what made it special went away. It got too good. Too focused. Too consistent.

I get it. It's business. They are in the business of selling cards. And if something is popular, it makes business sense to cater to it. And they did. Big time. It wasn't about digging up a suboptimal pile of jank rares anymore. Entire decks were available to buy right off the shelf. This made the format more accessible, which is great! But it took away some of what I thought made the format special. It was inevitable.

I stuck with it. I still built new decks. I still played. But the pandemic pushed it over the edge for me.

I was already not thrilled to play online games of MTG. I totally understand that online is the only option for some of you. That's certainly better than nothing, but I want to see and talk to the people I play with. That's my thing. MTG:Online doesn't scratch this itch. Arena doesn't even have a Commander option and feels even less like I'm playing with a real person. Webcam Commander games are unwieldy at best. And I no longer have the time or inclination to play long Commander games at my LGS, even if it was open.

That leads me to a rough conclusion.

I'm basically not playing Commander anymore.

Typing that hit me like a ton of bricks. The reality is that I wasn't really playing Commander anyway. I was just thinking about it a lot and that was giving me a vague sense of still being connected to the format. When I did play the occasional Commander game with friends, it was always 1vs1, which isn't really "my" Commander format anyway. That's just competitive MTG with more variance and the mini-game of trying to keep your opponent's Commander at bay.

Will I still collect and play MTG? Sure, I will.

I see more Old School cards and games in my future. No particular Old School format. Just trying to build something interesting. Trying to get a few weird synergies to work. I have cards in my binders I've never cast before going all the way back to Alpha. That's a great place to start. 

Old School MTG: Colorless Battlebots vs. Aisling Leprechaun

A short while back, I ran my mono-white Bottle of Suleiman deck into Ben's Aisling Leprechaun deck. It was fun! But I didn't really get to see the Leprechaun do it's thing. So, I went back to the drawing board, dusted off my Battlebots deck, made a few updates, and once again launched into the fray.

Behold!

Battlebots (2021)

Could the deck be better? Oh, yes. More Mishra's Factory is almost certainly better. But could the deck be cooler? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Okay, maybe finding a slot for Sword of the Ages would be cooler. You've got me there.

Ben's Leprechaun deck uses the little guy to turn creatures green, then uses other cards like COP: Green and Lifelace(!) to deal with opposing threats. It's fantastic and weird and wonderful all at once.

Ben, excited about Leprechauns.

At one point in the game, I was in top deck mode. Things were looking dire for team robot. I ripped an Aeolipile off the top. It was enough to win me the game and get me out from unrelenting Ernham beats. But, then this happened.

As an aside: Look, I understand that this isn't really how the rules work. That's not the point. The point is that the way this played out was way more fun.

I cast the Aeolipile. Ben used Lifelace to turn it green. Then used his COP: Green to prevent the damage.

Hey, hey! Lifelace!

I reality, I could have responded by sacrificing the Aeolipile. Sacrificing it is part of the cost, so it wouldn't have been on the battlefield for Lifelace to change the color. But still. I feel like that was the originally intention of how Lifelace was supposed to work. It was an interrupt. I certainly wasn't expecting it. And it made my night (and the game).

It was rad.

 

 

Hope of Ghirapur: Colorless Proliferate Commander

 

Click here to see the current list on TappedOut.

I build colorless commander decks. I wanted a deck for Hope of Ghirapur, but I didn't want to go down the road of sticking equipment on it and swinging. My budget Traxos deck mostly goes in that direction. It's powerful (sometimes), but that box was already checked. For Hope, I wanted to try something different.

+1/+1 counters and proliferate.

Hope is a 1/1 flyer for 1 mana. The deck has a low curve. There isn't an unlimited budget, but it's not a low-cost deck, either. I'm trying to keep the cost it in the range of a typical EDHRec deck. For the first draft, I stuck in as many cards that have counters or care about counters as I could find to make the theme more obvious. The deck is lousy with cards that either get counters, give counters, or add counters. Modular creatures are everywhere.

I've only had the chance to play a few games with the deck. It's fine. It sometimes does things. It needs more testing, for sure. And card draw. It doesn't recover from a board wipe. I hesitate to think about going up against multiple opponents. There are some great colorless cards that didn't make it into the deck. But it's tough to start cutting "on theme" cards to fit in cards that are objectively better. At some point, the theme goes away.

Old School MTG: Mono-White Bottle of Suleiman

 

It's genie time.

Over the years, I've built a mono-colored artifact-focused deck for each color (and colorless). The white deck was always a prison deck, but I wanted something more aggressive. Behold! Bottle of Suleiman.

There's a lot of words on that card, but basically 50% of the time it does 5 damage to you and the other 50% of the time you get a 5/5 flyer. At 4 mana to cast and 1 mana to activate, the rate is good if you can figure out a way to avoid the damage. It gets better if you can figure out a way to reuse it. That's where the other cards come in.

Before I go on, I want to be clear that I've tried a lot of different configurations of this deck. It's not good. It's not even remotely good. It's super casual. You could probably start splashing colors and make it "better," but the underlying combination of cards is weak. There are better combos and synergies in the format. It is fun, though. Well, fun when it works.

This guy. This guy along with COP: Artifacts is how I avoid taking damage from the Bottle. This creature is also reasonable at stalling creatures on the ground, but doesn't show up early enough in the game to really set an aggro deck back.

Then there's this guy. This guy is how I reuse the Bottle to keep trying again to get a genie.

There's a couple of cutesy things going on with the deck as well. This card transmografies a creature into an artifact, which is handy if you have a COP: Artifacts out. Should it simply be another Swords to Plowshares in this slot? Of course it should! But this is more fun.

This deck suffers from the classic problem of needing a lot of things to go right. There are combinations of cards that can become... not powerful. But better. If they show up together. Your opponent will be actively trying to kill you and disrupting your plan. It's common to draw the wrong combinations of cards. I frequently die to desperate Bottle flips with no way to avoid the damage, for example. Most of the cards are not great on their own, so it's a catch-22 to put more of them in.

I'm 100% open to a different way to approach this deck (still in mono-white). Maybe someone has a good setup out there. Maybe I've forgotten a key card. But if you're looking for something fun and casual to bring to an Old School event, take this for a spin!

Here I am losing to my own Bottle flip (twice). One flip failed and I took 5 damage. Then I brought the Bottle back, recast it, then failed the flip again taking another 5 damage. It was that or die to the threat on the other side of the table. This is one of those scenarios where if I had a way to mitigate the damage, I might have been able to pull ahead with an endless stream of genies.

Here it is working. Combo assembled. Bottle+Archaeologist+COP:Artifacts. Plus, I had a Chaos Orb in the graveyard for shenanigans with the Archaeologist! My daughter doesn't play Old School decks, but she is a good sport. And she wins most of the time!

Update: August 1, 2021

The stars aligned and I was able to play some Old School with Ben. It was my Mono-White Bottle of Suleiman deck vs his Aisling Leprechaun Ward deck. It was a blast. It was the perfect match of weird decks!

The deck he was playing words on this great synergy. The Leprechaun makes any creature it blocks or that blocks it become green. As long as he's got a Green Ward enchanting the Leprechaun, it has protection from that "green" creature. :) He also runs Circle of Protection: Green so that he can prevent the damage from all of the creatures the Leprechaun is turning green.

Here I am getting smashed to pieces by Ben's Force of Nature.

Here I am with the "combo" in full effect. The candy is a 5/5 Genie token!

Here's Ben getting hit by the Copper Tablet while my Bodyguard blocks for me.

Ben thinking about his next move. Does he play the fearsome Leprechaun?

All in all, it was the kind of fun I've come to expect from janky Old School duels. I lost a bunch of coin flips, as expected. I mostly took the damage from the Leprechaun rather than let Ben turn all of my creatures green. Bottles were flying in and out of the graveyard at one point.

Old School MTG: Revisiting Yawgmoth Reanimator (Again!)

 I've played this deck a few times over the years, but it was time to make a few small changes.

Old School Yawgmoth Demon Reanimator

I included the Coffin combo, Hell's Caretaker, Fallen Angel, and the Su-Chi / Priest dynamic duo. This deck is fun because it has so many lines of play.

This is me losing despite having a board like that!

The deck still lacks real card drawing. Ideally, reanimating creatures would create enough virtual card advantage to make up for raw card drawing, but in practice it doesn't always work out that way. Even though the Jalum Tomes can throw cards in the graveyard to get the undead party started, those should probably just be Jayemdae Tomes or split with Greed if I want to get fancy. I'd also swap out a Swamp for a Diamond Valley for those times when I just need the life boost or have an Animate Dead stranded.

Old School MTG: Colorless Parfait

 

Old School Colorless Parfait

This is a deck I blogged about months ago, but never got a chance to try out. Well, I tried it out.

It's working!

It works when it works. It's one of those decks. You know the kind.

There's a few problems. It's threat-light. There are 4x Vise and 4x Factories to deal damage. But! There's no good way in this configuration to permanently deal with opposing creatures. What happens in my experience is that the board gets gummed up with creatures I am forced to untap with the Mazes, so it's nearly impossible to push damage through with the Factories. And even with 4x Icy and 2x Relic Barrier, it's pretty easy to get "locked" under my own Orb. In a couple of my test games, the Vises didn't show up on time and I got overwhelmed.

The deck can manage fewer Orbs and doesn't need the Cane. Any game where the Cane matters is not a game I want to play to the end. That frees up two slots for 2x Copper Tablet, which might help move things along.

Meekstone and Forcefield are both fine... in the sideboard. The deck wants the Tabernacle to force the creatures off the board under the Orb and then swing with Factories. A couple of Candelabra would also open up possibilities. Disk seems like an auto-include and might be worth testing again, but in an earlier version of the deck I ended up bombing myself back to the stone age with it and it didn't work out to my advantage.

I'm not sure how a mirror match would go. That would be a heck of a thing.

The deck doesn't have much to do with Tron mana after dragging the game out. A Rocket Launcher might actually be the thing to close out games with this list. One Workshop could be cut.

Ultimately, this strategy works better in White. Moat, Armageddon, Balance, Swords, Disenchant. You know the drill. Wrath of God would be good too.

Old School Commander MTG: A More Aggressive Sindbad

I had the opportunity to play the Sindbad Old School Commander list a few times over the past few months. When I originally built the list, it was too defensive. I didn't play how it played out. It felt weak.

After testing it out a few times, I swapped out some of the defensive cards for creatures! That did the trick. Putting some creatures out there made the deck more interactive on the board and created more opportunities to move the game along.

The deck is stronger in this configuration.

My current list is at TappedOut. Click here to see it. Remember, this list is Old School AND Commander legal except that Sindbad is not officially a legendary creature.

Here is the list of swaps from my original test list. This will give you an idea of how the deck moved into a more aggressive posture.

• Living Wall --> Clay Statue
• Meekstone --> Dragon Engine
• Drain Power --> Phantasmal Forces
• Flood --> Urza's Avenger
• Relic Barrier --> Clockwork Beast
• Aeolipile --> Prodigal Sorcerer
• Aladdin's Ring --> Sword of the Ages
• Winter Orb --> Obsianus Golem
• Howling Mine --> Juggernaut
• Book of Rass --> Ring of Renewal
• Ivory Tower --> Su-Chi

Winter Orb is a helluva Magic card. It probably deserves a slot. Drain Power never seemed to give my the type of swingy turn I was hoping for when I planned the deck out. The higher creature count makes Sword of the Ages work well for closing out games when things get stuck on the board. I'm not sure Ring of Renewal is better than Book of Rass. It depends when it shows up. The right answer might be to run both.

I keep meaning to update my list on TappedOut with the actual versions of the cards I've collected, but haven't gotten around to it.

The trick for using Sindbad's ability to is evaluate if you already have a land drop to make. I made the mistake when I first started playing of activating Sindbad's ability whenever I could. It seems obvious now, but what ends up happening is you have a handful of lands and a graveyard full of the stuff you needed to win the game. Instead, now I only active Sindbad if I am going to miss a land drop. This makes a world of difference.

If you have a card out like Field of Dreams or Library of Leng, you can do all kinds of tricks with Sindbad because you have more information over what's on top. That's when things get really fun because you can use his ability to clear bad draws (for example) or to strategically stock your graveyard depending on what's happening in the game.

Average Commander: Playing the Average "Cheap" Traxos Deck

I spent last year building and tweaking a Karn/Robots Commander deck. I didn't get much of a chance to actually play with the deck due to the pandemic, but collecting cards was a fun ride. I wanted to do something different this year, something that's been on my mind for a while.

Playing the Average

Another thing I did last year was track all of the changes to the "average" Karn deck on EDHRec. It's not transparent what's happening at EDHRec, but basically you can ask the site to return an "average" deck based on all of the decks in the database. You can restrict the deck to "cheap" or "expensive," which appears to simply return the bottom 10% of decks and the top 10% of decks respectively based on whatever internal pricing system it is using.

What's clear is that the sample size for Karn is too small to make much sense for the bottom or top 10%. The overall average deck is reasonable, but contains strange cards choices. It's interesting to see that the "wisdom of the crowd" doesn't always run the most effective card in a given slot, even when the card is less expensive ($).

This year, instead of building my own deck, I wanted to literally play the average deck. I expect lots of strange (sub-optimal) card choices. I also expect to find some new cards or synergies I may not have noticed otherwise. To get a larger sample size, I'm using Traxos instead of Karn. Traxos is the most popular artifact colorless commander on EDHRec. Kozilek is the most popular colorless commander, but is not an artifact. I'm not saying I'll never switch it up, but I wanted to stick with robots.

Since I only collect/play colorless cards in Commander, I had most of the cards already. I'm starting with the "budget" or "cheap" version of Traxos, which is made up of the bottom 10% of decks in the database. The TCGPlayer Direct price is $61.

Alter Sleeves MTG: An Attempt Was Made

I love altered MTG cards. Customizing Commander decks runs deep, I guess. And it runs in all different directions. In my Magic travels, I ran across this website:

https://www.altersleeves.com/

These alters look awesome. I haven't seen any in person, but at least on screen they look awesome. And the idea is simple and brilliant! Mass produced alters! By printing the alters on the inner sleeves, the player can swap the card in without any fuss.

So, I decided that a quick first draft was in order. I pulled a Worn Powerstone from my main Commander deck, grabbed a Sharpie marker, and started drawing on the inner sleeve. It looked like this.

The card on the right is untouched. The Sharpie is only marked up on the inner sleeve on the left. This is a low-risk way to alter a card. Don't like how it turned out? Replace the sleeve and start over. Want to try something new? Great! Grab a new sleeve and start drawing. Want to draw on an expensive card? Go for it. Well, go for it by drawing on the sleeve.

Here's what the card looks like inside the inner sleeve.

Does it look great? Heck no! But for a first try, this plan has promise. The stress level for doing an alter like this is low. 

Here it is in the outer sleeve.

Does it look like a Sharpie alter? Of course it does. That's what it is. The light/camera isn't doing it any favors either. I'm looking forward to trying this with some better markers. Colors! I'll bet even a thin layer of white paint with marker on top would work.

Ultimately, if you find a design you like at a website like Altered Sleeves, that might be the way to go. There are so many cool options. But if you want to try a low-risk, stress-free way to customize your deck, try altering your inner sleeves instead of the cards themselves.

Uncurl Foil MTG Cards For Real

5/16/2021 - Update - I left the cards double sleeved and packed tight in an enclosed space with dehumidifier packets. They warped again. The uncurling was not permanent.

I'm careful with my cards, always have been. I keep them in double sleeves. Temperature controlled. Low moisture. I store my cards in a Pelican case with desiccant packets and in a safe with desiccant packets.

I'm one of those people.

Over the years, I occasionally get a foil card that is already curled. The foils I've opened from packs or that are already flat when I get them stay flat. But the foils that are already curled, they are a different story.

I've tried everything to uncurl the foil cards. Pressing between stacks of books for weeks on end doesn't work, even when I use tissue paper to "draw in the moisture." Physically curling the cards the other way doesn't work, at least not for more than a few minutes. Double sleeving helps to physically hold the cards flatter, but it's still obvious that there's a curled foil in the deck. I've stored cards in sleeves and out of sleeves in sealed containers with desiccant packets. I've tried everything, that is, except putting them in the oven.

Guess what finally worked?

First, a couple of disclaimers. Don't do this to your cards. This worked for me, but maybe I got lucky. Maybe my set up is entirely different from yours. Maybe it's pure coincidence. You've been warned.

Here's the deal. I've had a few cards in one of my Commander decks that drive me crazy. The deck is for casual play, but it's still annoying to have a few cards that are obviously curled foils in the deck. If one gets shuffled to the top or shows up in a cut, it feels bad because everyone knows what it is. They know I'm not cheating, but it can still ruin the moment. I've stored these cards in a tight deck box for years and the curl has never come out.

In other words, these cards were technically unplayable. I had nothing to lose.

My assumption is that the foil layer of the card on the face is plastic or something similar that doesn't absorb moisture. The cardboard layer is paper and does absorb moisture. Too much moisture and the paper layer expands. Since the plastic layer cannot expand, the card curls "up" toward the face. Presumably the opposite happens if the card is too dry.

Like I said, I've tried other methods to remove moisture from the cards with no success. This time, I decided to try putting the cards in the oven.

I started by heating the toaster oven to 150 degrees. Then I turned it off. I only used the residual heat on the cards.

The first plate I put the cards on didn't allow them to lay flat, so I switched to a bigger plate.

I took them out of the oven, then pressed them in a big book between sheets of tissue paper as they cooled.

Nope. Still curled. I decided that I had everything out already, so I might as well give it another try. This time I turned the oven up to 175 degrees and left it on with the door open.

I also put the cards on the edges of the plate so that I could see clearly if they started to bend. The card on the left is starting to bend slightly across the back. I didn't take my eyes off the cards. Once I saw the bend forming the other way, I took the cards out and pressed them in the big book again between sheets of tissue paper.

Success. It's difficult to see in this picture, but the cards are completely flat. I put them back in double sleeves, back in the tight deck box, and left them overnight. When I took them out the next day and shuffled the deck, I could not tell which cards they were in the stack. These cards are as flat as any of the other cards.

All told, this process took about 20 minutes. Now that I know what I'm doing, I could flatten dozens of cards using the same process in less time. The biggest thing is to watch the cards in the oven closely and pull them as soon as you see the curl flatten. You can always put the cards back in if you need to.

Old School MTG: OS Battle Bots!

Are you ready?!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. This Sunday, get ready to rumble... with the rough and ready Battle Bots!

Watch as these metal machines smash, grab, rip, tear, and grind through the competition. Marvel as steel and rust monsters shift gears and crash for cash. It's dirty, rusty, and brutal.

We'll sell you the whole seat, but you're only going to need the edge.

Bat-bat-battle bots!

Do you want to see robots and rocket launchers? Do you want to see flying machines and battering rams? Join us this Sunday for Old School Battle Bots!

Who will be able to defeat the unstoppable Juggernaut? Will Urza's Avenger come out on top? Don't miss a second of the action when the Clockwork Beast winds up to drop a hammer on the fire-breathing Dragon Engine. Be there when the Yotian Soldier takes on the Brass Man in the Arena.

You're favorite artificers are all in on the action. Battle Gear, Weaponry, and Grenades. It. will. be. explosive!

Battle Bot fans unite. This Sunday.

Two-for-one coupons available at your local Urza's Mine, Tower, or Power Plant location. Visit any Mishra's Factory or Workshop for a free official Battle Bots! hat or t-shirt. Piston punch your way to a good time for the whole family.

Old School MTG: Old School 40 - Singleton

I've organized a 40 card Old School format tournament for a small group of friends a few times over the past few years, mostly to make the entry into Old School more forgiving and accessible. We change the rules up a bit each time, but basically it's 40 card decks using OS cards.

Earlier this year, I started thinking about building a 40 card singleton OS deck for each color with the intention of playing the decks against each other. Of course, there's still a global pandemic so this is all theoretical. I built decks for Red, Blue, and Black. Keep scrolling for deck selfies.

I played a few "games" of one deck vs. the other. They games play out a lot like the Alpha 40 games, which isn't too surprising. There is almost no deck manipulation or draw, so top decks matter a lot! Drawing lands for a few turns in a row when you need action is a problem if the other deck has pressure on the board. Classic stuff.

Getting the chance to test these decks out enough to tune them will be challenging until we can get together in person again, but it was still fun to put these decks together. I'm always struck by how darkly colorful and saturated the Alpha/Beta cards are compared to other prints/sets. It really jumps out in a side-by-side comparison with a set like Legends. Arabian Nights is in the ballpark, too.

Right now, I'm running Alpha - Fallen Empires. FE could be easily cut. The decks might work better as Alpha/Beta/Unlimited. Since the decks are so small, even with the singleton deck construction limit, it turns into running most of the most obvious cards for each color/slot with a few surprises.

The goal was to have something "ready to play" and simple enough for quick games. After putting these together, the better approach might be a mini-Battle Box designed for 2 players using OS cards. There's a great example of this using Revised cards at MTGBattleBox. We have a Battle Box using bulk cards that is a crowd favorite, so an OS Battle Box could be a good entry point for the OS format. The best part about Battle Box is that card combinations you wouldn't otherwise see come up all the time. It's a way to get surprising mileage out of the cards you've been playing for 25+ years.

Red

Blue

Black