It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me in Magic, and as part of my new article “series” here on ManaDeprived I plan to take you through some of what I saw as the noteworthy discussions and happenings around the Magic world. Some local, some online, some tournament results and maybe a decklist or two. Let’s get started!
The Game Day That Almost Wasn’t
Like I usually do, I played both Game Days this weekend in addition to playing FNM. My FNM list (RW Land Death) was mildly terrible, despite being able to beat UWR Twin with [card]Simian Spirit Guide[/card] beatdown and leave Soul Sisters with no permanents on board when winning game 2. I fully intended to take a mild tweak on Brad Nelson’s Rock Midrange list to both the Saturday and Sunday Game Days, having played something very close to it the week before and enjoyed it immensely.
I wanted to try a single [card]Liliana’s Reaver[/card] in the deck in place of one [card]Lifebane Zombie[/card], as our meta is heavy on UWR and the Zombie is just not that good against them. I also wanted to main deck the [card]Demonic Rising[/card] for much the same reason: UWR has big problems with that card in tandem with [card]Mutavault[/card]. Plus I could win games with freaking DEMONIC RISING. I rode some poor draws, some strong luck from my opponents and a couple of misplays to losing my win-and-in, rather disappointing but I felt totally redeemable the next day without needing to make changes.
When I showed up on Sunday already in a bad mood for a variety of non-Magic reasons, that mood would worsen when I realised my deck was sitting at home on my couch. Despite a couple of offers to run to my home and collect it, I was in far too bad of a mood to accept acts of kindness. Instead I bought some sleeves and tried to figure out what I could make without my UWR cards (a Twinja had borrowed the whole deck from me), any of the cards in Rock midrange and limited time. Good thing that one of my favourite TV shows is The Food Network’s Chopped! This was a pretty challenging basket but an idea was starting to form.
I had wanted to do something like BW Humans for a while, running both M13 exalted Knights in a low-curve beatdown deck with [card]Champion of the Parish[/card], [card]Gather the Townsfolk[/card], [card]Vault of the Archangel[/card] and Village Cannibal. Yes, Village Cannibal. [card]Cartel Aristocrat[/card] made sense, so I added Doomed Traveller. [card]Xathrid Necromancer[/card] then became an auto-include. I was leafing through three different binders at breakneck speed, whipping out any card that seemed like it might fit in this deck. Then I came to one very sudden realisation: Without Necromancer in play, I just scoop to any resolved Bonfire.
There wasn’t much to be done about it, to be honest. I made my sideboard heavy on the Bonfire hate with [card]Brave the Elements[/card] AND a “go big” package of Obzedat, Blood Baron and [card]Archangel of Thune[/card]. I played the full four [card]Thalia, Guardian of Thraben[/card] in the main both to ward off turn 2 [card]Farseek[/card] and to put a Bonfire back a turn. And of course the forgotten tech made the cut – [card]Frontline Medic[/card].
Ironically the Knights ended up getting cut for [card]Imposing Sovereign[/card] and a playset of Thalia (Jund hates waiting a turn to do anything) but the deck was really fun and way more powerful than it had any right being.
I would go 3-1-1 in the Swiss, only losing on camera (Midgard Gaming streams its Game Days and GPTs, sadly the archive appears to be gone) to a pair of punts in game 2 and mana screw in game 3. Top 8 was a different story as I saw 5 lands over two games, with all of them being in my opening hands. That’s not a winning formula, trust me. Some highlights included blanking a [card]Putrefy[/card] of Obzedat with [card]Brave the Elements[/card], allowing me to attack my team through his [card]Thragtusk[/card] and win; beating RG Aggro at 34 and 47 life in games 1 and 2 respectively; getting my [card]Sin Collector[/card] Azorius Charmed having taken a [card]Warleader’s Helix[/card], only to recast it and nab Sphinx’s Revelation; responding to a white splash for Blood Baron in a Jund deck that surprised me in game 2 by bringing in my own in game 3 and winning the race. All in all I loved the deck, thought I played well, and can’t believe I was stupid enough to omit [card]Skirsdag High Priest[/card]. HE’S EVEN A HUMAN, LANSDELL!
Changing the Hall of Fame
The Pro Tour Hall of Fame changes its eligibility criteria next year so that only players with more than 150 lifetime points will be on the ballot. With the relative ease of getting to 100 these days compared with before, that change was probably foreseeable and almost definitely a good idea.
Increasing the eligibility requirement will knock multiple people off the ballot next year, including most notably Chris “Meddling Mage” Pikula. Now the debate over whether or not he is deserving of such an honour may be rendered moot because he is 14 points short of even being in the discussion next July. That said, very few people with less than 150 Pro Points have been voted in to the Hall of Fame, so aside from the case of Pikula I can’t see this being especially relevant. Chris has been given an invitation to PT Theros so all he has to do is top 25 it and he’ll be in a good spot to get his points and get back on the ballot.
One other interesting note is that the requirement to get a vote as part of the Player’s Committee has NOT changed. Pro players with 100 or more points will still be able to vote people in to a Hall for which they are not (yet) eligible. Is this a problem? Some people seemed to think it was, based on Twitter feedback. It’s certainly strange, but I think it might actually be a GOOD thing. Maybe voting for people who are ahead of them in the “pecking order” so to speak might motivate the odd one or two to come back to tournament Magic.
There are two changes we still HAVEN’T seen that in my mind are not only a good idea but are close to essential to give the Hall not only more visibility but also more relevance and prestige. The first of those is a Magic Hall of Fame, either as a replacement for the Pro Tour Hall of Fame or as a separate wing thereof. There was a lot of talk this voting season about how “ludicrous” it is to have a Hall of Fame that does not contain Chris Pikula (who has been on the ballot every year, by the way). I would suggest that it’s equally ludicrous that there is currently no Hall of Fame for people like Brian David-Marshall, Pete Hoefling, Michael Flores, Skaff Elias or Richard Garfield. Most sports with Halls of Fame also include a Builder’s Wing or something similar for people who have not played the game at the highest echelon but have nonetheless made massive contributions to its success.
The second change is to have a physical Hall of Fame that people can actually visit. Magic is now 20 years old and it has a lot of history behind it now, and making that history visible (and visitable) to players and curious parties can only be a benefit. Whether the Hall would be in a fixed location (Renton for example) or travels around to major events (the Pro Tour, Worlds Week, GenCon, PAX and so on) is an interesting question, and one that might not have a good answer (cost vs exposure). All I know is that the chance to see Magic’s greatest players immortalised in one location along with memorabilia, photos, possible interactive exhibits and the like is a tantalizing concept.
REMEMBER MY NAME
Man, how good is Huey Jensen? Something crazy like six SCG Open top 8s in a row, including two Standard top 8s in one weekend with the same 75, plus a win. If he was running any hotter the IAAF would be asking for a urine sample. Can we get this man in the Hall of Fame already?
EDITOR: We did Lansdell. Couple of weeks ago.
We did? Oh. Well then.
Seriously though, anyone who didn’t know how good Huey is/was should be paying close attention to his results and his play at SCG Opens recently. I chatted with SCG Coverage coordinator Reuben Bresler who gave me some insight into why Huey chooses to play Opens instead of GPs. “He gets to play every round in two different tournaments every weekend,” Reuben explained, as opposed to the byes he would have at GPs and the possibility of being out by round 5 and not having a high level of competition for Sunday. Reuben also said he tries to put Huey on camera as much as possible, so I highly recommend watching greatness at work. This is the man Jon Finkel once called the best player in the world. I don’t know how much higher an endorsement you need.
Oh sure you can argue that SCG Open players are not at the level of GP day 2 players, and you’d probably be right despite anything Todd Anderson would have you believe. Consistency in a game with built-in variance is still a sign of great quality and play skill, and his string of results is nothing short of astounding.
Can someone make sure Brad Nelson knows who Chris Pikula is?
Drafting hard Core
I’m pretty picky when it comes to draft formats. I hated RTR and GTC, loved AVR and DGR and M13. I loved Innistrad block too, but that goes for almost everyone I think. I have to say that M14 might be surpassing M13 as my favourite Core set to draft. It’s missing [card]Roaring Primadox[/card] (a throwback to one of my favourite creatures of all time, [card]Stampeding Wildebeests[/card]) and [card]Acidic Slime[/card] and it doesn’t have a viable mill strategy, but the archetypes are varied, the gameplay is deep enough and the power level of some of the decks verges on ridiculous. Twitter has been abuzz with talk of the mono-blue [card]Opportunity[/card] deck, and having drafted it I can tell you that it feels filthy and insanely powerful. For those who have missed the chatter, it involves drafting at least one [card]Opportunity[/card], a couple of [card]Divination[/card]s and some fliers, an [card]Elixir of Immortality[/card] or a combination of the two. You also get to play with [card]Staff of the Mind Magus[/card], which makes people think you are terrible. Bonus!
What I have discovered though is that there are several decks on a similar power level, if you can get them. Like the [card]Spider Spawning[/card] deck in Innistrad, all the tweets from pros have made it close to impossible to get a good mono-blue deck any more. My second choice is actually mono-black, as [card]Corrupt[/card] and [card]Quag Sickness[/card] are very powerful spells that get better the heavier your commitment to black is, and the rares you have available ([card]Nightmare[/card], [card]Dark Prophecy[/card] and [card]Liliana’s Reaver[/card] being the standouts) are a step above most other rares. The mythics are the worst I think, but don’t often show up.
Green would be next on my list, mainly because of the interactions between some of the key cards in the deck and the fact that its rares AND mythics are very strong. With so many powerful enchantments and a couple of strong artifacts in the set, [card]Naturalize[/card] is probably fine in the main deck. [card]Plummet[/card] is too, and [card]Windstorm[/card] almost single-handedly beats the blue fliers deck. The real reason to go heavy green though is [card]Howl of the Night Pack[/card]. With only two or three ways to sweep a board in the format ([card]Planar Cleansing[/card], [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] and [card]Scourge of Valkas[/card]) and one of them being mythic, your canine army should be able to see you to victory.
Finally I think white might be a little better than red if we’re forcing mono-colour because it has more cards that reward you for doing so but also because the uncommons are likely better. [card]Serra Angel[/card] is better than any single red uncommon, and [card]Pacifism[/card] is more versatile than [card]Shock[/card]. I could very well be wrong on this front as I have yet to draft mono-red, but white did very well for me. Granted I had [card]Archangel of Thune[/card], but sometimes it happens, right?!
That’s all that caught my eye recently. See you again soon with more looks inside the community!
Chris is a deck brewer, podcaster and lover of bacon. He’s recently realised he isn’t completely terrible at this game.