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.