The Dragon’s Maze pre-release weekend was one of the weirdest series of events I’ve ever played. And I’m not making a pun about playing Melek, Izzet Paragon in my deck on Saturday. Winning decks didn’t make sense, players did strange things, and cards appeared and disappeared from packs.
Double casting off your library is pretty Weird
Follow me through the Implicit Maze that is my local game store (LGS) pre-release, as I highlight the four most puzzling aspects of my weekend.
Yes! It’s Dragon’s Maze Pre-Release time!
Once again I am going against my better judgment and grinding through the Midnight event at Stadium Cards & Comics in Ypsilanti, MI. I’ll be joining the Church of Orzhov tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll be part of the collective conscience while rocking my favorite Dragon-led guild, Izzet. And I’ve already promised to play every Goblin Test Pilot I open tomorrow.
I know it’s last minute but there’s a sweet Guild Pack viewer over on MythicSpoiler.com that lets you see the options each guild pack (and potential “secret ally guild” pack) can contain.
Here’s to everyone opening awesome things, never getting mana flooded or mana screwed, and having a great time smelling that new card smell! If you’re looking for something to do with those prize packs, check out an old article about Winston Drafts and Pack Wars!
And don’t forget Yoda’s advice -
I might have to change the name of this website after leaving yesterday’s StarCityGames Super Invitational Qualifier semi-victorious. Out of 100+ players, I ended up in 3rd/4th place, my highest finish in a large tournament since, well, the beginning of time. We had three members of Team BMP in the event, and we celebrated this sudden change of luck and match results with some awesome BBQ at Red Rock in Ypsilanti (the place is so good I had to plug it).
We’re number 4! We’re number 4!
My deck was a slightly altered version of the fairly popular American Flash deck (you can find the decklist HERE), which I prefer to call “Izzorius” based on the feeling I have combining the electric control of Izzet with the strong command of Azorius.
After testing out various builds, including both the ones featuring Boros Reckoners and those relying on Aurelia, the Warleader, I was left craving something more intimidating to finish off my opponents. Fortunately, I came across Anthony Lowry’s article on TCGPlayer.com about the potential awesomeness of everyone’s favorite Izzet guildleader, Niv-Mizzet, the Dracogenius. I tested him out at a local event the Thursday before the IQ, and loved his unbridled power, so I ran two of him and changed a few cards in Lowry’s PTQ list from the article – the main changes being the inclusion of my favorite control card in the format right now, Izzet Charm, and tossing in Aurelia’s Fury and Mizzium Mortars instead of two Pillar of Flame, which I had found unimpressive against a format made up mostly of midrange and control decks.
I finished 5-1-1 in the Swiss, squeaking out an 8th place finish on tiebreakers – I had an even 50% Opponents Match Win breaker over the 9th place guy’s 49% and change OMW. It took some decent playing and a good chunk of luck to get through it all. But don’t worry, there were still plenty of times throughout the day where I was a Bad Magic Player!
I love spoiler season(s) – it’s like Christmas every 3 months! We stay up until midnight to see what new cards Santa of the Coast will be filling our stockings with on Release Day, then drool on ourselves, oohing and ahhing (and sometimes groaning and freaking out) over the new pretties and busted hotnesses that are revealed. Then we rush over to sites like MTGSalvation.com to find even more spoilers!
Speaking of spoilers and MTGSalvation, today I checked the site and found a member of the Izzet guild that is easily one of the greatest creatures ever printed:
(Spoiled on MTGSalvation from Mark Rosewater’s Tumblr account)
Was that the sound of your jaw dropping to the floor? I know, you’re so impressed with this gem that you don’t even know what to say. Well I’ll speak for you then!
Goblin Test Pilot (or GobTP) has everything - it’s a creature and it does stuff! What more could you ask for!? Let’s break down what GobTP is bringing to the table for all you Izzet players out there.
First, the creature part: GobTP flies! And he’s got a butt (sorta)! Screw you Lingering Souls spirit tokens! This guy will block one of those annoying spirits all day…nobody plays Intangible Virtue, so you’ll be nearly safe and sound (from one spirit, at least) with GobTP on your defense team. Who cares that he has no power, you’re an Izzet player! You’re playing the stall game until you drop Niv-Mizzet and just win, so don’t fear and throw down these guys in defense position. He’s also really great at blocking your opponent’s Augur of Bolas, so this card will single-handedly shore up the control matchups in your favor.
Next up, the stuff part:
Just wow. Totally insane. A Shock on a stick! And forget about that random part – you’ve got enough good luck saved up from those Delver of Secrets missed flips and Augur of Bolas fail-to-finds to ALWAYS hit the target you want. And as a bonus, I know you’ve been dying for months to use that Randomizer app on your iPhone (and you thought you wasted $2.99).
Now, you might be feeling a bit skeptical about the chance GobTP might hit himself with that ability. But don’t you worry your little Izzet face one single bit. Remember, YOU are always a possible target for GobTP when he rolls the dice. That increases your odds by one HUGE potential outcome. Think about this way: a 1-in-4 chance (25%) to die is TONS better than a 1-in-3 chance (33.33%)! And this thought is irrelevant anyway, since like I said before, you’ll always hit what you want with this ability. The random part is just to scare the noobs away from drafting him early.
I’ll assume that after taking a closer look at Goblin Test Pilot, you can’t wait to shock your way to victory with this defensive stallion. It’s obvious that because of how awesome he is, Goblin Test Pilot will be one of the most expensive uncommons in the set upon release, so you better pre-order your playset now!
A buddy and I went over to Grand Rapids (Michigan) this past Saturday for a TCGPlayer.com Platinum Qualifier. It was basically a mid-sized event where you can win a few hundred bucks and entry into a big $50K tournament later this year. We did absolutely terrible, although most of my losses were due to a combination of terrible luck (sure, that’s what all the scrubs say). I was playing a slightly edited Boros Reckoner version of American flash (here’s an example list of the archetype).
To start things out, we drove two hours just to be matched up together in Round 1. 179 players, yet somehow the two of us are matched to start it out. Not willing to ruin each other’s day that early, we took an intentional draw.
Round 2, I crushed my Naya Midrange opponent. It was fun to Rapid Hybridization his Thragtusk in response to his attempt to value-bounce it with Restoration Angel. Two 3/3 tokens is FAR better than a 3/3 token, 5 life, and a 5/3 that will turn into another 3/3 token. Value is still value, even if it isn’t incredible value.
Pongify is back and still good!
Round 3, I played against a very interesting Simic Delver deck that relied heavily on Quirion Dryad and a crapton of blue instants, growing the Dryad with every spell played (think Searing Spear targeting Dryad, but Think Twice or Simic Charm in response to put it out of lethal range). I wasn’t prepared to face the deck game 1, but was able to lay the smack down in game 2, paving the way for an epic game 3. Hand one: 4 spells and all ISD/M13 lands (like Glacial Fortress)…almost always a mulligan on the draw, especially against a fast deck like this one. A turn 2 Dryad or a flipped turn 1 Delver of Secrets and I’m screwed. Hand two (6 cards): one land, nothing less than three mana. Hand three (5 cards): no land. Hand four (4 cards): no land, but very, very enticing, with Supreme Verdict, Searing Spear, Izzet Charm, and Negate. If I drew two land in a row I’d be in business, but I threw it back anyway. My three-card hand was a land, searing spear, and izzet charm, so it was a keep, and I actually drew several lands in a row to keep the game alive for a bit before getting stomped by a Quirion Dryad that was an 8/8 when I died. Mulliganing to three is generally a bad thing, I’ve heard.
Round 4, I played my favorite match up – Esper Control. I believe I have a slight advantage over that deck game one, mostly because I have Harvest Pyre in my deck (and they fill up my graveyard with Nephalia Drownyard), and Izzet Charm to help keep my opponent’s Sphinx’s Revelation and Sorin/Lingering Souls threats under control. I was rocking out game 1, running quite ahead, when my opponent plays a shocker of a card – a maindeck Rest in Peace. Of course, the next card I drew was Snapcaster Mage, and a few cards later I ripped that Harvest Pyre. Game 2 I cruised to victory, with the best part being when my opponent played Duress and I showed him a hand of Negate, Dispel, Dissipate, Izzet Charm, and Snapcaster Mage. He scooped shortly after. Game 3 was a close one, even though I started out stuck on three land (the three in my opener, of course) and kept drawing Sphinx’s Revelations and Restoration Angels that I couldn’t play. I had my opponent down to three life with a Searing Spear in my hand, but I knew he had a Sphinx’s Revelation from an earlier Augur of Bolas, so I had to play around it to get in those last points of damage. Interestingly, my opponent landed a Jace, Memory Adept and milled me for 10 – seeing the other three Searing Spears in my deck all at once. I was hoping he’d feel safe casting the Revelation so I could kill him in response, but he played well and didn’t let me have the chance. I didn’t draw any counter magic, and he was able to Terminus away my Restoration Angel I had threatened with in the meantime. He had 2 mana open after the Terminus, so I threw caution to the wind and played the Spear, but he had Negate. I didn’t really have a choice but to try it then, since I was only two turns away from losing to the Jace mill-out, which is how I ultimately bit it.
Round 5, I lost in a mirror match, mostly because I was on tilt from getting my 2nd loss (taking me out of top 8 contention), and also because in game 2 my opponent played two Assemble the Legion in a row, and I couldn’t dig a Detention Sphere out to deal with. I was run over by an increasing army of little red and white soldier dudes. That card is awesome by the way, and with so little enchantment removal in the format, it almost seems like a maindeck choice.
Round 6, I finally had the chance to play against the Junk Rites/reanimator deck that everyone has been so afraid of lately. Game 1 I already have a fairly awkward matchup against it, but I tried to shore it up with main-deck additions like Rapid Hybridization to deal with Angel of Serenity and Obzedat. Rapid Hybridization is a real card (especially since Boros Reckoner keeps a 3/3 token in check nicely), and was actually really helpful against every match-up except Esper Control. Anywho, during game 1 I killed Obzedat three times with Hybridizations, but he was able to find more Unburial Rites and later used Angel of Serenity to get it back again. I really wish there was an exile instant that didn’t cost a billion mana like Smite the Monstrous to deal with that stupid Orzhov card. Game 2 I stabilized after Dissipating two Unburial Rites and Hybridizing Obzedat twice again, and it became a war of attrition with both players handless. We both then drew SEVEN, yes SEVEN lands in a row. His eighth draw was an Angel of Serenity that gave him back Obzedat and two Thragtusks underneath, and I drew a Supreme Verdict and then three more land. My deck taunts me cruelly.
Big Spirits. Big Annoyance.
So that’s how it went, 1-4-1 drop. I had some terrible luck, probably made some bad plays I didn’t know about, but for the most part, I can count at least two of those losses to mulliganing to three and getting mana screwed/flooded. Hooray for variance. I really love the American Flash archetype, and have been doing very well with it at the local store events – I’ve top 8′d every week I’ve played it during the past month. It can’t be the deck, so it must be the player. After all, I am a Bad Magic Player.
Apparently I’ve been doing BadMagicPlayer.com for a year now, and boy, does time fly. What started off as a joke and something to waste time has grown into…well, a slightly larger joke and more of a time waster.
Anyhow, I’m super stoked about Gatecrash and its potential smashing impact on all the formats. But no format will be ravaged more by Gatecrash than SilverBlack Standard. I’ve taken a bit of a break from playing the weekly Saturday evening Magic Online SBS tournaments mostly because of one card’s dominance: Lingering Souls.
Currently, SilverBlack Standard is a format with no real wrath effects and there are few practical ways to deal with an Esper Spirit deck’s ability to make 4-6 spirits incredibly fast and then play one Intangible Virtue or Phantom General for good game. There are plenty of ways to deal with the pumpers, so those aren’t really the issue. Intangible Virtue and Favorable Winds can be disenchanted or countered, and there are plenty of removal and burn cards available to take down Phantom General and Drogskol Captain without a problem. But focusing on the buffers leaves a huge number of flying spirits still on the table that ultimately beat you senseless without any real way to keep them in check. As a result, the card was recently banned for the “official” events online, but there was no indication whether it would stay banned after more sets release.
Enter Gatecrash, a set that brings us enough spirit hosers to let us consider the reintroduction of the token-generator back into the wild.
Happy New Year BadMagicPlayer Readers! As you can tell by my lack of posts, I’ve been on a little break from Magic. I moved back to Michigan and am slowly getting back into the swing of things, so expect to see more activity on BMP.
Since I have been out of the game for a few months, I don’t really have much of a card collection, making it difficult to jump into constructed events. But alas, a solution! A good friend of mine, and founder of Cardstomp.com, has been kind enough to “sponsor” me in my constructed tournament efforts until my collection again matches my interest in the game. It works out well, since he gets a 30% “sponsorship fee” from the store credit I win, and I get to play tons of Magic (3-4 nights a week) without having to heavily invest right away.
I asked for a Standard deck, and my friend passed me a red-green “Gruul Value” deck made, basically, of all the best green and red cards in Standard. There are the obvious includes of Huntmaster of the Fells, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Thragtusk (arguably the best card in Standard right now), but the list has a few surprise includes.
Click here to view the deck on Essential Magic (more analysis tools, interactive, etc.)
Surprise!
Creatures
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Thragtusk
4 Borderland Ranger
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
2 Zealous Conscripts
2 Wolfir Avenger
1 Vorapede
Sorceries
3 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Farseek
2 Mizzium Mortars
3 Pillar of Flame
Instants
3 Searing Spear
Planeswalkers
3 Garruk Relentless
Lands
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Kessig Wolf Run
9 Forest
7 Mountain
Sideboard
3 Plummet
3 Strangleroot Geist
3 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Magmaquake
1 Acidic Slime
1 Sundering Growth
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
