mordred

Cube Archetype – Vampire Tribal (BRw)

Last Friday in place of our usual draft we had a cube draft night.

Due to some drop outs we had a less than ideal 6 players but good times were had by all with an abundance of silly decks. From the previous times I played the cube I was concerned about the possibility of there being too many aggro decks but we got quite a good assortment, including:

UGr +1/+1 Counters (splashing Sarkhan Unbroken and Borborygmos Enraged)
WBG Midrange (Seige Rhino, Tasigur, Wurmcoil and other goodstuff)
RWu aggro/soldier tribal (Field Marshall and Captain of the Watch with Assemble the Legion)
BG Midrange.
Jund Midrange (some vampires but not a tribal deck).
Something I’ve forgotten.

It all went well though and it’s put me in the mood to start work on improving the setup again. Specifically I want to look at the various archetypes (one in each two colour pair although some bleed into a third colour to include some cards I like, plus there are some miscellaneous tribal themes and an optional artifact deck).

Due to the cubes size (just over double the normal size to allow for lots of variance and for more players) to make an archetype actually appear in drafts and be noticeable a thing you can play you need a few more cards for it than you would normally have so if this looks like overkill its just to balance it. Also due to the variance theres a lean towards cards that work on their own without going all in on a theme with just a few hard themed cards.

In this example I’ve leaned towards there being quite a crossover with the BG graveyard/zombie deck (the sac outlets and death triggers in particular).

Today I’m looking at the BR theme (which has a very slight bleed into white) which is Vampire Tribal. The original build didnt have near enough cards to make the deck viable, nor were there enough tribe relevant effects to make you want to draft it. This version should improve slightly (the full list is at the end of the post).

The All-In Cards

There are a few cards which just don’t do a great deal while you aren’t running critical mass of vampires, Chief among these are the tribal lords Captivating Vampire and Stromkirk Captain, neither are playable without multiple other vampires but are all stars if you’ve got the numbers on your side.

These guys are also the big indicators that there is the possibility of drafting a tribal deck as a lot of the cards play well enough independently or are bombs in their own right.

Kalastria Highborn wants a vampire heavy deck but also works well if you have elements of the GB-Sacrifice/Zombie deck.

The Standalone Cards

There are plenty of vampires which are strong enough to be bombs in their own right and get taken by any deck playing the colour but get pushed a lot by being surrounded by more vampires.

Anowon is great on his own as in the event of there being no other vampires out he will still just kill everything BUT himself which is no bad thing for a black centric control deck.

Nighthawk, Drana and the Aristocrat all get improved greatly by having a lord in play (with a Stromkirk Captain in play nighthawk kills anything it touches and it costs a lot less to keep Aristocrat alive in combat) and Drana will keep some of your more fragile vamps from biting it (no pun intended, seriously its not even a good one).

Olivia gives the unique benefit of potentially turning everything with more than 1 toughness in your deck into a vampire, and that’s on top of being both removal and mind control.

And Malakir Bloodwitch…despite the textbox being a direct synonym for “PLAY MOAR VAMPIRES” would be absolutely fine as the only vampire in your deck (4/4 flying with pro-white for 5 is already bomb-level good, draining 1 on top of that is at least some degree of relevant).

The Filler Cards

There are a pile of other vampires to fill out the deck (most being just acceptable cards on their own, a couple like Bloodcrazed Neonate need a little more work to make good).

Between the high likelihood of seeing some planeswalkers in the draft and some of the shenanigans that could come about in the GU deck then Vampire Hexmage is a strong pick for any black deck. The same applies to Gatekeeper of Malakir, as he is strong in his own right and is another card which would play nice in a base-black control deck.

There are also a handful of red vampires from Innistrad in here to fill out the deck.

Crossover With Other Archetypes

Given vampires seem to change theme every time a block includes them (Original Zendikar had the “less than 10 life” theme, Innistrad had “the slith ability”, Return to Ravnica had Orzhov vampires and Battle for Zendikar has life gain…although on that front I wish Kalastria Healer was a “vampire enters the battlefield” rather than “ally enters the battlefield” for the purposes of this even though I know that would make absolutely no mechanical sense in the set) there’s quite a wide variety in effects.

This does mean that a few of the vampire cards fit pretty well into the other Bx decks in the cube.

Blood seeker is fine in the BW Taxman deck as one of many effects that gradually kill the enemy outside of combat.

Viscera Seer and Blood Bairn fit into the BG deck as sacrifice outlets and Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble and Butcher of Malakir all serve as part of the payoff for those sacrifice effects.

The Off-Colour Bleed Cards

There are 3 vampires in BW which are included in here. They all serve roles in the defense oriented BW-Taxman deck but are perfectly acceptable splashes here given how multi colour the cube often leans. They’re all also cards I’m quite fond of, particularly the two Dragon’s Maze cards as I played them a lot when they were in standard (Tithe Drinker bumped the frustratingly bad Bloodcrazed Neonate out of my standard vampire deck and I played Blood Baron both in that deck and BW Midrange for his entire time in standard.

Technically in this section is [mtg_card]Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker[/mtg_card]. He is however absolutely sod all to do with the deck and is basically an alternate win-con for a UB deck, although he wouldn’t be an abysmal splash.

The complete list

[d title="BRw Cube Subtheme (Vampires) - November 2015"]
Black
1 Vampire Lacerator
1 Viscera Seer
1 Blood Artist
1 Blood Seeker
1 Child of Night
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Kalastria Highborn
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Blood Bairn
1 Captivating Vampire
1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir
1 Markov Patrician
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Falkenrath Noble
1 Mirri the Cursed
1 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Butcher of Malakir

Red
1 Stromkirk Noble
1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Crossway Vampire
1 Markov Blademaster
1 Rakish Heir
1 Vampiric Fury

Rakdos
1 Stromkirk Captain
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Olivia Voldaren

Orzhov
1 Tithe Drinker
1 Drana's Emissary
1 Blood Baron of Vizkopa

Dimir
1 Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
[/d]

I have yet to obtain 100% of this but it (and changes to the other decks) will be going in before the next time the cube comes out to play.

Battle for Zendikar – Casual Deckbuilding 1

While I don’t often get to play standard (I have a nice casual draft I like to go to on Fridays) I still cant help having the odd brewing session. Today I’m looking at some decks which are distinctly on the “filthy casual” end of the standard spectrum.

Sideboards on these are EXTREMELY placeholderey and in a lot of cases contain cards I just generally like. If you want to use any of these…well you know your metas better than I do.

BW Warriors

This one is probably the closest thing to competitive here (the pre rotation version of this got me 4 wins at a GP). Thankfully the deck didnt lose too much to rotation (the main hits were [mtg_card]Hero’s Downfall[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Temple of Silence[/mtg_card]) and what we did lose pretty much got a 1:1 replacement.

The creatures are solid, and in this version I’ve upped [mtg_card]Arashin Foremost[/mtg_card] to 4 as he really was the best card in the deck back at the GP and I only ever wanted more. [mtg_card]Brutal Hordechief[/mtg_card] has been demoted to sideboard and also the first card to remove should you want to slot in something for your meta.

Extra copies of [mtg_card]Blood-Chin Rager[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Mardu Strike Leader[/mtg_card] reside in the sideboard, the former for creature heavy matchups, the latter for control.

The removal is still pretty solid. [mtg_card]Valorous Stance[/mtg_card] is still great, [mtg_card]Ruinous Path[/mtg_card] does the job (it’s just here as unconditional removal, the awaken is pretty unlikely to happen very often in this deck) and [mtg_card]Ultimate Price[/mtg_card]/[mtg_card]Murderous Cut[/mtg_card] are pretty flexible between main and side depending on what you expect to play against more.

With [mtg_card]Thoughtseize[/mtg_card] gone I’ve opted for [mtg_card]Despise[/mtg_card]. I found this decks downfall being things like multiple [mtg_card]Siege Rhino[/mtg_card]s or [mtg_card]Dragonlord Atarka[/mtg_card] more than control.

[d title="BW Warriors - October 2015"]
Creatures
4 Arashin Foremost
2 Mardu Strike Leader
4 Chief of the Edge 
4 Seeker of the Way
2 Battle Brawler 
2 Blood-Chin Rager 
4 Bloodsoaked Champion 
4 Mardu Woe-Reaper

Removal
4 Ruinous Path 
2 Ultimate Price

Utility
2 Secure the Wastes 
4 Valorous Stance 

Land
4 Shambling Vent 
4 Caves of Koilos 
8 Plains
6 Swamp 

Sideboard
4 Despise
2 Murderous Cut
1 Utter End
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
2 Blood-Chin Rager
2 Mardu Strike Leader
2 Brutal Hordechief
[/d]

UG Morph/Manifest

This one a little further towards the silly end of the scale. It uses [mtg_card]Whisperwood Elemental[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Temur War Shaman[/mtg_card] to get extra creatures on the board, then uses their “turns face up” abilities for various effects.

The deck lacks any traditional hard removal but there are some flexible options in Temur War Shamans fight ability and Fleetfeather Cockatrices bounce. You also have some anti control options in [mtg_card]Scatter to the Winds[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Stratus Dancer[/mtg_card]s counterspell abilities and [mtg_card]Mistfire Weaver[/mtg_card] to protect a key creature.

The win conditions are either getting a face up [mtg_card]Sagu Mauler[/mtg_card], chipping in with your flyers or flooding the board through [mtg_card]Whisperwood Elemental[/mtg_card]s.

The sideboard adds some more counter options, some more [mtg_card]Sagu Maulers[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Mistfire Weaver[/mtg_card]s.

[d title="GU Morph/Manifest - October 2015"]
Creatures
4 Den Protector
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
4 Stratus Dancer
4 Icefeather Aven
4 Deathmist Raptor
2 Mistfire Weaver
4 Whisperwood Elemental
2 Temur War Shaman
2 Sagu Mauler

Enchantments
2 Secret Plans
2 Trail of Mystery

Spells
2 Scatter to the Winds

Lands
4 Lumbering Falls
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Thornwood Falls
8 Forest
4 Island

Sideboard
2 Ainok Survivalist
2 Silumgar Sorcerer
2 Kheru Spellsnatcher
2 Mistfire Weaver
2 Sagu Mauler
3 Disdainful Stroke
2 Scatter to the Winds
[/d]

RUG Midrange

This is a less competitive and less expensive (read less [mtg_card]hangarback walker[/mtg_card]ey) version of some of the temur decks floating around at the moment.

The land base is a bit on the pricey end but theyre good cards to be getting.

The ramp is…worse than we’d like but w cant always have [mtg_card]Birds of Paradise[/mtg_card].

[d title="RUG Midrange - October 2015"]
Creatures
2 Frost Walker
4 Whisperer of the Wilds
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
4 Savage Knuckleblade
2 Yasova Dragonclaw
4 Thunderbreak Regent
2 Icefall Regent
2 Surrak Dragonclaw
2 Dragonlord Atarka

Planeswalkers
2 Kiora, Master of the Depths
2 Sarkhan Unbroken

Enchantments
2 Temur Ascendancy

Spells
2 Crater's Claws
2 Exquisite Firecraft

Lands
2 Cinder Glade
4 Forest
4 Frontier Bivouac
2 Island
4 Lumbering Falls
4 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard
4 Radiant Flames
2 Roast
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Ascendancy
2 Harbinger of the Hunt
2 Heir of the Wilds
1 Dig Through Time
[/d]

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (2009/Into Darkness)

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

The last big alternate timeline bundle comprises the ships of the 2009 reboot universe.

This doesn’t include the Kelvin (and by extension Captain Robau and the Kirks) although I may make these up as Federation ships.

When it comes to the 2009 universe I cannot stand the oddly scaled hugeness of the ships so for the purposes of this assume that the new Enterprise is about the size of the original but with the stat line of the refit version to represent the technological edge. That puts the Vengeance in line with the bigger 24th century Federation ships (and not utterly ridiculous) so it’s stats fall roughly in the area of the sovereign class (with some downsides).

USS Enterprise

The Enterprise has the stats of the Constitution Refit, representing the alternate timelines seemingly higher tech level. The ship ability and move dial both let the ship push what a Constitution would normally be able to do (a 4th attack dice and a 5 forward maneuver) at the cost of auxiliary power tokens, after all a few scans of the Narada and a new arms race with the Klingons aren’t going to lead to fully developed and integrated tech.

The crew have had some changes since my original release. Captain Pike is now an Admiral. His ability remains largely unchanged but could be a shenanigan enabler given it can be fired off from any one of your ships on the Admiral side.

Kirk and Spock both have new templating courtesy of one of the many, many Riker cards (I THINK Pegasus Riker). Kirk is a pet favourite ability of mine, as I always wanted some way to use the two upgrade dice together (and fluff wise represents the ridiculous luck level of this Kirk).

The rest of the crew largely got minor templating changes and the obvious faction change.

Narada

The Narada breaks a few rules conventions. The named ship is the fleet killer we know from the movie while the generic is a lightly armed mining ship.

The logic here comes from the comics leading into the 2009 movie. The standard ship lacks any significant weaponry and has a terrible move dial. Once the stolen Borg technology is integrated into it it gains the Borg faction and upgrade slot, some more shields and a massive PWV. It does however lack any improvements to maneuverability or the agility value as the ship is still immense and bulky.

Nero’s original version had a restriction on where he could be used. I planned, in this version, to restrict his ability to being used on ships with a high PWV but that just wasn’t readable so now he just throws extra dice at point blank range (and grants a second reroll on top of any target lock or other reroll you may have).

Nero’s first officer Ayel has a shot at disabling each character on the enemy ship but it requires some dice luck. The Red Matter Bomb puts a token (I haven’t made this yet but basically a planet token sized object with an objective token in the middle) on the field which gradually destroys anything unfortunate enough to not be able to escape its gravitational pull.

USS Vengeance

The vengeance lacks any crew slots has a high powered stat block. To balance this it loses the 180 forward firing arc of most Federation ships of this era and gets a rather clunky move dial. It does however have a white forward 5 and a reverse 1 white (2 is still red). It goes fast…it just doesn’t turn very well.

Admiral Marcus also got the upgrade to Admiral and his action got a buff, basically allowing a ship to use old school disable torpedoes every turn.

Khan also got some alterations for readability reasons. His ability still functions the same but the text has been bumped onto a free (for him) upgrade card in the style of the NX-01 and enhanced hull plating.

And last but by no means least is Ambassador Spock, specifically Spock prime. I’ve made him dual faction Vulcan and Federation and given him an ability which, on a ship with the right upgrades, should have him working his usual magic.

There will likely be one more alternate timeline post (a few odd items like the Bozeman, Kelvin and Premonition plus anything else that comes to mind) and then I’ll get onto the Typhon and working out how to make a carrier work with the retail fighter rules. Well that or my Dominion War stuff.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (Yesterday’s Enterprise)

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Number 4 in the series of Alternate Timeline attack wing expansions is Yesterday’s Enterprise, including the Enterprise-C and a warlike variant of the Enterprise-D and crew.

The Enterprise-C (not mirror universe as it was a prime universe ship that just happened to end up in an alternate future…pay attention wizkids) falls into an odd spot gameplay wise between the Excelsior and Galaxy classes. There’s no spot between 3 and 4 attack dice, nor does the ship really justify a second defence dice like my earliest version. Factoring in some feedback on my original BoardGameGeek post I settled on a massive-hulled flying tank with an unusual move dial focusing on low speed turns (in the DS9 opening the Ambassador class looks pretty nippy).

The named ability also factors into the floating tank aspect, giving you an extra defence dice against a ship outside your firing arc.

Captain Garrett can be discarded to prevent your ship from being attacked for a turn. I wanted this one to have a little edge over the usual attack cancellers so its outright NO attacks as opposed to cancelling a single attack.

Castillo improves your defence, as long as you keep performing evasive maneuvers actions.

The alternate Warship Enterprise-D is designed to discourage the normal attack wing opening joust. Attacking it head on will let it split its attack with potentially quite a few additional attack dice. Alternate Picard gets stronger the worse the situation gets for you or your most damaged nearby ally and when you finally do get taken out (lets face it this ship would be a bit of a firepower magnet) you can throw one last shot at your attackers.

Riker is slightly underwhelming against a single target, but gets progressively better the more targets you fire on. Throw the named ship plus Picard and Riker, with 2 damage on the ship into a split attack against 2 ships at range 1 and youll be rolling 10 attack dice split against the two targets with a guaranteed hit against each.

Data lets you turn the ship around 90 or 180 degrees. This one is probably the most potentially broken of my things, although unlike Admiral Q he does only apply to a single ship. Wesley is another passive defensive buff with the option to trade in for an emergency reroll.

Tasha Yar is another attack canceler, this time preventing an attack against another ship rather than your own, the threat of which hopefully being enough to force the enemy to focus on Tashas ship first.

Lastly Guinan (now dual faction Federation and Mirror) is another time travel/alternate timeline themed card, this one letting you mulligan a set of dice rolls or a maneuver.

Next in the list is the new movie ships.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (Timeless)

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Today’s custom goodness is the Voyager alternate timeline episode “Timeless”.

This one includes another shuttle I made before official shuttle rules, or mirror universe rules. My original Delta Flyer has now been changed to Mirror Universe (as well as getting a generic version) and had its stats changed to match the official one.

The USS Challenger also got changed to mirror universe and has had its stats altered to match the mirror Enterprise-D (and therefore doesn’t have a generic or move card).

The flyer is a simple faction change of the Federation version with a new defensive ability added on.

Captain Chakotay’s original version gave a flat reduction to your attack dice as the penalty for using his evasive action but I changed that to a variable based on the agility of the ship you attack, just to make it a little different (and there’s a kind of fluff logic to it…the slower your target is the easier it is to hit during evasive maneuvers). Harry, as in the show, tries to save another ship by repairing a critical (or preventing it from ever happening). Tessa disrupts enemy ships at close range. The flyer will easily get out of the arc of a large ship like a Galaxy and when they try and get you back in arc they’ll have to plan around a potential aux token.

The Temporal Transceiver (Seven of Nine’s severed head, creatively rewired) is another way to simulate the effects of altering time. In this case it let’s you remove a troublesome critical from one of your own ships or take a second shot at crippling an opponent. Both this and Harry are unlimited range, just for thematic fun reasons.

Enhanced Thrusters is a generic “one per ship” tech upgrade for both Federation and Mirror Shuttles. The original version just gave +1 agility, but I decided to push this one a little too, originally because the new Flyers move dial is slower than the one I made on the first attempt. The end result is a pretty cool fluff card (in my opinion) that lets you trade in enhanced maneuverability to overheat your engines for a burst of speed.

The Challenger is meant to represent a ship with a former engineer captain running at peak efficiency, hence removing extra auxiliary tokens (intention with this version is for it to remove 2 on a qualifying green move, 1 on a white. Would this be considered brokenly good if Wizkids released it…maybe…It would certainly be at least good.

Geordi straight up lets you repair a damage or shield, even if you are on auxiliary power. This works even better in Mirror than it did in Federation as the MU does tend to lean towards slightly less tanky versions of ships, so that’s nice. This one is also pretty pushed in power terms…but I’ve always liked Geordi.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (All Good Things)

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Second in this series of updating old Attack Wing homebrew to bring it up to line with current rules are the ships of “All Good Things”.

This is an interesting one as much of what I originally intended has already been release (namely Assimilation Target Prime included a mirror universe Enterprise-D and the Pasteur has been released to retail).

That in mind what we have here are some sections to fill the blanks (many I imagine will one day be obsoleted by a “Galaxy Dreadnought” release).

First up is a Federation faction version of the USS Pasteur. The stats have been changed from my original version to match the mirror retail one, but the named ship and captain Crusher have new abilities.

The ACTUAL AGT Pasteur exists in retail form along with Captains Crusher and Worf and crew upgrades for Ogawa and Chilton, however it lacked crew cards for old Picard, Geordi and Data.

The AGT Enterprise-D exists well enough as the mirror Enterprise-D from the Assimilation Target Prime pack, however it could do with beefing up to Galaxy Dreadnought status. Both upgrades are split faction to play nice with the Federation version as well.

Lastly I also originally made an Admiral Riker. While there’s now a proper mirror one (which I really like by the way) I’ve updated my old one and made him an elite talent to match.

This was of course originally made long before the Q Continuum card pack and Admiral Q and I wanted to represent Q himself in some way. I opted for a talent upgrade which originally let you reroll anything. In the updates I’ve changed it to Q faction and upgraded its power a bit, it now just sets a dice however you like. It does not come in cheap however if your captain doesn’t satisfy Q’s definition of interesting.

Next time…probably either Timeless (Delta Flyers for everyone) or Star Trek 2009.

Star Trek: Attack Wing – Homebrew (Endgame)

(This post is a follow up to my earlier BoardGameGeek post here)

Never content with just playing a game, especially a Star Trek one, I’ve taken to making up some additions to Attack Wing. My first batches went up in various themed posts on the boardgamegeek forums.

Since then however a number of the games rules and conventions have either changed (the addition of the mirror universe faction and what falls under that) or new features have been added (such as full rules for shuttles and fighters) as well as official versions of couple of the ships I made (USS Thunderchild, USS Lakota and USS Pasteur).

With all of that in mind I’ve decided to go back and bring my stuff up to standard where the new rules are concerned.

My first set of redesigns cover the Voyager finale “Endgame”.

The original rules predated the release of the shuttle Sakharov so I had my own shuttle rules. I had the range 2 limit but in place of docking and the capital ship rule I had some modifiers applying to range penalties and enemy secondary weapons to make them a little more survivable.

Also all of the cards were Federation and in keeping with the way the game has gone I’ve turned them into Mirror Universe (in fact MU will be getting a lot of the toys from these updates as they were primarily federation alternate timelines).

The USS Rhode Island

I decided to keep standard Nova Class stats and movement for the mirror version but to give the named Rhode Island an aggressive ability both to fit in with Mirror Universe faction and to represent soloing a pair of Neghvar class starships in a science ship.

Captain Kim provides a simple free scan action. A little unimaginative I know but it would make a perfectly reasonable science ship captain with an upgrade or two to trigger off it. His talent upgrade is suicide in the traditional head on attack wing joust but if you manage to get behind an opponents ships you could screw their entire attack for the round.

A new card type I introduced was the “refit” upgrade. These use no upgrade slots and cannot be disabled or discarded (functioning more like a flagship resource than an upgrade). They are not unique but only one can be assigned per ship. Each refit can only be applied to a specific class of ship, but a ship class may have more than one refit option.

The refits may grant upgrade slots, new abilities or improved stats.

The Nova Class refit can be used on either the prime or mirror Nova Class starships and bumps its attack and evasion up.

Shuttlecraft SC-4

Admiral Janeway’s shuttle also got moved into Mirror Universe. Some changes were made to the maneuvers to bring the ship closer into line with other shuttle classes.

The ships defensive ability also got a push to balance the loss of some of the bonuses shuttles got in my old rules.

Admiral Janeway uses advanced tactics to weaken an opponent. There’s also the, somewhat pricey, option to take Janeway’s Neurolytic Pathogen. It massively disrupts your enemies for several turns, but will cost you the captain/admiral it’s assigned to.

Miral Paris allows you to trade tech upgrades with your opponents…whether they like it or not lastly the chrono deflector allows you travel to a different part of the board at a time of your choosing.

That’s it for this time, next up is probably All Good Things.

Battle for Zendikar: The alternative set review

With yet another spoiler season drawing to a close I wanted to talk a little about Battle for Zendikar. I don’t have the patience for a full blown list of every card (and there are plenty of regulars who would do a far better job of it than I) so I’ve decided to cover a few different categories.

The cards I most want to play with.
The cards I least want to play against.
The cards I most want to get hold of a set of quickly.

The format I play the most is draft but this will lean into the realms of constructed as well.

The cards I most want to play with.

First up I’m very much hoping that I manage, at least once, to pull of a Black/Green Eldrazi Scion sacrifice Deck in limited. There seems to be a reasonable number of options to do this without getting lucky with rares, although I want to start a draft with Brood Butcher.

Another limited deck I’d like to pull off is allies with a hint of lifegain. I’m a great fan of limited decks capable of ending the game on a silly amount of life (I’ve had some 3xKTK Abzan mirror matches ending on 50 or 60) and Lantern Scout strikes me as one capable of pulling that off. The allies deck itself seems pretty fun, but I’m not convinced it wont be the thing that’s fought over in draft (especially given its quite heavily in white and where I play whites often over drafted, although that’s probably just us).

When it comes to the properly big stuff…I haven’t actually played in an environment where this kind of thing was particularly viable (I came back to the game around New Phyrexia). From what I head Rise of the Eldrazi was a hell of a format but with the reduced number of Scions vs Spawn and the fact that they’re more combat relevant I don’t know if it will actually be viable to try and cast a ten-drop in limited. That doesn’t mean though that I won’t be giving it a go. I’m rather hoping to get a desolation twin or Ulamog win in somewhere along the line. Here’s hoping for something even bigger and sillier in OGW.

The cards I least want to play against.

There are certain kinds of cards that rub me up the wrong way in draft games. Usually they’ll be things that very rapidly turn a game into something extremely one sided. Sometimes these are overpowered cards, or hard to interact with “if this happens you’re done” cards (recently Sagu Mauler springs to mind). “Bad” cards are just as likely to appear here because magical Christmas land doesn’t look so good from the outside.

First mention goes to a pair of cards which, while not inherently unfair are going to reduce a lot of draft games which could otherwise have been turned around into one sided smash fests. While both of these abilities require the player using them to at least have a board position and preferably a stream of allies but when they DO work it wont be a feel good moment for the player on the defense.

Swarm Surge gives me the same feeling of a game rapidly turning into crap. Given the amount of devoid, colourless and scions around I can see it not being that unreasonable to be utterly blown out by this from a fairly stable board. Although I do want to give this one a try, especially if I can get a scion heavy deck.

The cards I will want to get hold of quickly

With every new set that comes out I always prioritize the same 2 things, before anything fun like planeswalkers and bomby creatures. Lands and removal.

These…whatever the final decision on their name turns out to be…slow-ish fetchable duals…They’re far from exciting (a major theme of this section) but they’re what we have and if we want to play standard we’re playing them. And I doubt an extra fetchable dual will hurt in commander or a lower power cube like mine (once i add fetches of course).

As for man-lands I have a particular liking for the black/white one, especially given I’ll be needing a replacement for Temple of Silence in the warrior tribal deck. Oh yeah and whatever the horrendous Abzan deck of the format is I’m sure it’ll slot straight in.

Then there’s removal, since RTR came out I’ve always focused on getting the better rare removal. Mizzium Mortars, Abrupt Decay, Dreadbore, Hero’s Downfall and similar cards are almost certainly going to get used at some point and most pull their weight through standard and on into commander and cube beyond that.

“Not quite Hero’s Downfall” is by no means bad. I played Dreadbore plenty, especially in my late beloved Mardu Vampires deck and this has a nice little potential upside to it.

“That exact thing there can sod right off” will probably slot into every commander deck I make on the general principle that it will fill in whatever removal void the colour combination lacks. My mono-black demon tribal Ob Nixilis deck immediately springs to mind.

Speaking of Ob Nixilis, it’s Ob Nixilis. This new one doesn’t exactly break new ground, but…well it’s just a huge heaping pile of value on a card. Basically new Ob Nixilis is the card you would design if you wanted to explain the textbook examples of a solid planeswalker. At the absolute minimum he’s card parity, killing a creature or drawing a card to replace itself and if left unchecked will absolutely dominate the game. He isn’t too expensive, he has enough loyalty to survive a lot of pounding and his ultimate will win the game in short order.

Of course there’s a place for creatures too and I’ve taken a liking to Undergrowth Champion, particularly along with Avatar of the Resolute. I’m thinking of attempting to build up either GW +1+1 counters or going into Abzan for Abzan Ascendancy…yes and Siege Rhino. Alternatively you could go all in on mono-green with hardened scales, Managorger Hydra…maybe Den Protector.

There’s a bonus mention here for “All the Eldrazi” as all this colourless goodness is making me crave a 5 colour Eldrazi ramp EDH deck complete with all the Eldrazi legends (because sometimes casual is fun) and Progenitus as commander. All silly, all the time.

Filling this sets desirable uncommon slot is Sylvan Scrying. Not a lot to say but I’ll definitely want to pick up a few.

Also in the desirable uncommon slot is Stasis Snare. While it’s not as universal as O Ring, “exile target creature” is still pretty good. Especially as a sideboard vs anyone unlikely to be able to easily get rid of it.

Scatter to the Winds is another “unexciting but playable” entry. This time “cancel with slight upside” makes a 3/3 in the late game. That’s by no means bad. I was quite happy with Dissolve and Dissipate and they were both fairly slight upsides. I’d happily play a couple of these in a deck that wants them.

And Finally…

Today’s honorable mention, the Battle for Zendikar special award for the card I will most come to resent opening in packs…

It’s a straight up tie…I couldn’t make my mind up between hard to cast, limited targeting mind control and a derpy limited effect enchantment.

Granted I might be horribly undervaluing these but…I don’t THINK so.

I’m a little warmer to the other converge cards. Lose 3 and draw 3 is by no means bad and an adjustable Pyroclasm could be cool.

My rampant speculation for the next set is “Red will be pushed”. Every other colour seems to be getting nicer toys in this one so I’m going to go for a playable Chandra and a couple decent burn spells at the lower end (perhaps not a 1R for 3 burn but something to serve as constructed burn filler).

Introductory decks for new players/casual games

A few months ago a couple of friends expressed an interest in learning to play and I started thinking about what I had which would be suited to teaching a new player (or for a first few paper games for someone who had only played duels).

All I really had at the time that was playable were my commander decks, which aren’t really the best introduction and the cube which…well I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

I did have some modern and standard decks but nothing which is on any kind of similar power level or which is intact from one week to the next (I sacrificed many decks to build the cube).

There are the wizards starter decks (see here, theyre little 30 card dealies made of recent commons and uncommons) but I didn’t want to go and get these online, nor do I particularly like the decks themselves. I would much rather, if teaching someone to play, give them something with a higher power level, some more appealing cards and a full 60 card deck.

That in mind I set out to make a set of decks for new players (and for the odd casual game where someone wants to test a deck, not modern level stuff just casual/standard level decks).

I settled on one deck in each colour, using a small number of rares and some favourite commons/uncommons that I don’t often get to use.

I also wanted some of the traditional archetypes such as green being big dumb creatures, and black being big on removal.

The original decks were including cards up to Khans block but I wanted to upgrade to some origins cards so here are the new versions.

[d title="New Player Training Deck - White - 10/09/2015"]

Creatures
4 Elite Vanguard
2 Doomed Traveler
2 Gideon's Lawkeeper
2 Consul's Lieutenant
2 Alabaster Mage
2 Precinct Captain
2 War Priest of Thune 
2 Attended Knight
2 Fiend Hunter 
2 Gideon's Avenger
2 Mausoleum Guard
2 War Oracle
2 Serra Angel

Spells
2 Midnight Haunting

Enchantments
2 Pacifism
2 Honor of the Pure

Artifacts
2 Bonesplitter

Land
24 Plains
[/d]

The white deck has a pretty clear theme of making tokens then buffing the whole team, so pretty traditional white weenie. There’s some “temporary removal” and [mtg_card]Serra Angel[/mtg_card] as an iconic white card (and just because its cool). This is also the only deck to have any equipment, and it’s as simple an equipment as you can really get.

[d title="New Player Training Deck - Blue - 10/09/2015"] 

Creatures
2 Palace Familiar
2 Mindshrieker
2 Azure Mage
2 Jeskai Elder
2 Jhessian Thief
2 Wind Drake
2 Watercourser
2 Mist Raven
2 Mistfire Adept
2 Tower Geist
2 Soulblade Djinn

Spells
2 Unsummon
2 Mana Leak
2 Dissolve
2 Crippling Chill
2 Divination

Enchantments
2 Domestication

Artifacts
2 Aether Spellbomb

Land
24 Island
[/d]

Blue is, as you would likely guess, the spell heavy tempo deck. Theres some prowess added from Khans and Origins along with a big pile of evasion.

Also this deck wants to draw a LOT of cards. Physically the creatures are a little weaker than the other decks but if you can stall out the game you should be able to drown your opponents in cards.

[d title="New Player Training Deck - Black - 10/09/2015"] 
Creature
2 Typhoid Rats
2 Malakir Cullblade
2 Hand of Silumgar
2 Child of Night
2 Onyx Mage
2 Blood Scrivener
2 Markov Patrician
2 Nantuko Husk
2 Soulcage Fiend
2 Undead Executioner
2 Rakshasa Gravecaller
2 Bloodgift Demon

Spells
2 Sign in Blood
2 Doom Blade
2 Murder
2 Tribute to Hunger
2 Gild

Enchantments
2 Shadows of the Past

Land
24 Swamp
[/d]

I’ve opted for a sacrifice/death trigger theme for black with an alternate win con of Shadows of the Past (or just an incredibly hench [mtg_card]Nantuko Husk[/mtg_card]).

[d title="New Player Training Deck - Red - 10/09/2015"] 
Creatures
2 Forge Devil
2 Lightning Berserker
4 Ashmouth Hound
2 Stormblood Berserker
2 Abbot of Keral Keep
2 Crimson Mage
2 Scab Clan Berserker
2 Acolyte of the Inferno
2 Goblin Heelcutter
2 Scourge of Geier Reach
2 Zealous Conscripts

Spells
2 Fiery Impulse
2 Tormenting Voice
4 Searing Spear
2 Pyrotechnics

Enchantment
2 Madcap Skills

Land
24 Mountain
[/d]

Red has a lot of creatures which are either hard to block or which punish blocking plus a good assortment of burn. Burn goes without saying. I’ve also allowed a little bit of dash into this one as its a fairly straightforward mechanic (the previous version actually had archwing dragon).

[d title="New Player Training Deck - Green - 10/09/2015"] 

Creature (26)
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Darkthicket Wolf
2 Jade Mage
2 Alpine Grizzly
2 Netcaster Spider
2 Briarpack Alpha
2 Somberwald Alpha
2 Giant Spider
2 Thragtusk
2 Woodborn Behemoth
2 Arbor Colossus
2 Garruk's Horde

Spells
2 Titanic Growth
2 Tread Upon
2 Prey Upon
2 Cultivate

Enchantment
2 Triumph of Ferocity

Land (24)
24 Forest

[/d]

Green is exactly what you would expect, ramp, big creatures some things that play off having the biggest baddest creature on the field.

I’ve played a fair few games with people who only have casual decks with these and they’ve worked pretty well for that. They’ve also been a success when taking people through their first couple of games.

The match ups weren’t perfect in the previous versions, for example green tended to die to the flyer heavy decks a little too often. These current versions contain some tweaks which I’m hoping will rebalance them slightly.

The KING of Draft Decks

Sometimes a draft just comes together and you get a fantastic polished machine of a deck, something that almost feels like constructed-lite. I was lucky enough to have one of those last Friday. For context this was a 6 man draft and in the end Blue seemed pretty open even with me hogging all the good red (Blue is traditionally rather under drafted in my group, at least in this set).

The draft opened with a Scab-Clan Berserker, and I followed that by sticking to red as my main colour throughout pack 1. In general I try and stick to 1 main colour in pack 1 just to stay open for later in the draft and that worked pretty well here as I pretty effectively staked out red and had my choice (mostly in pack 2 where i picked up Skysnare Spider, Undercity Troll and Valeron Wardens) of pretty much anything as support.

In fact for the entire draft red stayed wide open so I was able to pick up multiples of some of the better cards. In fact its only Undercity Troll that really convinced me to not try mono red.

Also as a fun little bonus I picked up a Hangarback Walker as my rare in pack 3, although he didn’t come out that much except as win-more in a couple of games. The walker was only hugely relevant in one odd game where I started with it and removal and pretty much had to play defensively for a long time (in that situation the Walker is an all star, constantly threatening to get beyond the reach of combat).

By the end of the draft I had the following

[d title="Draft - 28/08/2015"]

Creatures
1 Hangarback Walker
3 Subterranean Scout
1 Undercity Troll
1 Leaf Gilder
2 Akroan Sergeant
2 Ghirapur Gearcrafter
1 Thopter Engineer
1 Scab-Clan Berserker
1 Valeron Wardens
2 Firefiend Elemental
1 Skysnare Spider

Spells
2 Titan's Strength
3 Fiery Impulse
1 Ravaging Blaze
1 Wild Instincts

Land
9 Mountain
8 Forest

Sideboard
1 Thopter Engineer
1 Lightning Javelin
1 Goblin Glory Chaser
1 Magmatic Insight
1 Cobblebrute
1 Volcanic Rambler
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Mage-ring Bully
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Vastwood Gorger
1 Hydrolash
1 negate
1 Nivix barrier
1 Nantuko Husk
1 Fetid Imp
1 Heavy Infantry
1 Throwing Knife
[/d]

Round one was vs BG Elves and opened with a truly ridiculous start of T2 Undercity Troll, T3 Valeron Wardens, T4 Firefiend Elemental. By the end of the game I had a full board on top of about 6 cards in hand from a stream of renown triggers. It was a sort of magical christmas land moment.

Game 2 wasn’t so outright ridiculous but still progressed similarly. I did over extend a little but decided the odds of the one card that could stop me, Eyeblight Massacre (which admittedly my opponent had in his deck), actually appearing was limited enough and the risk did pay off.

Round 2 was a UB control build. In games 1 and 3 he just didn’t have the blockers to survive the relentless onslaught of dudes. Game 2 my opponent got pretty much all removal until a [mtg_card]Possessed Skaab[/mtg_card] to return MORE REMOVAL while I got badly flooded out (it happens to us all from time to time) and couldn’t maintain any kind of relevant board presence.

Round 3 was a tempo-ey UW flyers deck. Again the early rush proved too much except for one bizarre game where I opened on [mtg_card]Hangarback Walker[/mtg_card] + a guy and my opponent removed the guy and put [mtg_card]Grasp of the Hieromancer[/mtg_card] on a creature putting me in a strange defensive position of having to bluff the boardstate into allowing me to appear to need to chump with the walker then pump him to get large enough to trade. That series of things drained enough of my opponents toys though that I was able to rebuild afterwords with an assortment of Thopter makers.

Sadly over the entire course of the night I never saw [mtg_card]Skysnare Spider[/mtg_card] or [mtg_card]Ravaging Blaze[/mtg_card].

As a thought experiment I’ve put together what is probably the best mono-red deck you could get from this pool.

[d title="Draft Mono R Variant - 28/08/2015"]

Creatures
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Goblin Glory Chaser
3 Subterranean Scout
2 Akroan Sergeant
2 Ghirapur Gearcrafter
2 Thopter Engineer
1 Scab-Clan Berserker
2 Firefiend Elemental
1 Cobblebrute
1 Volcanic Rambler

Spells
2 Titan's Strength
3 Fiery Impulse
1 Ravaging Blaze
1 Lightning Javelin

Land
17 Mountain


Sideboard
1 Magmatic Insight
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Mage-ring Bully
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Vastwood Gorger
1 Undercity Troll
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Valeron Wardens
1 Wild Instincts
1 Skysnare Spider
1 Hydrolash
1 negate
1 Nivix barrier
1 Nantuko Husk
1 Fetid Imp
1 Heavy Infantry
1 Throwing Knife
[/d]

The question to me is do you run [mtg_card]Goblin Glory Chaser[/mtg_card] or [mtg_card]Throwing Knife[/mtg_card]…Im genuinely not sure…probably the Knife.

NOTES FROM A WEEK LATER:

This Friday just gone I managed to end up with an extremely similar deck, albeit slightly slower. I don’t have the full list to hand but this time I had 3 [mtg_card]Lightning Javelin[/mtg_card], 1 [mtg_card]Exquisite Firecraft[/mtg_card] and 3 [mtg_card]Fiery Impulse[/mtg_card]…yeah…quite happy with that. Creature wise I lost the thopter makers and Hangarback, getting double [mtg_card]Zendikar Incarnate[/mtg_card], another [mtg_card]Undercity Troll[/mtg_card] and a couple of [mtg_card]Yeva’s Forcemage[/mtg_card].

I didn’t manage 3-0 this time, instead i won the first two rounds then lost to a bizarre [mtg_card]Angels Tomb[/mtg_card]+[mtg_card]War Horn[/mtg_card]+[mtg_card]Flameshadow Conjuring[/mtg_card]+wide assortment of 1 drop creatures deck. I didn’t see THAT coming I can say that much.