“…Magic is, at its core, about change. The most fun part of a game for most gamers is the part where they figure out how the game ticks. It’s all about the center or the corners or about piece A or part B. It’s the part of the gaming experience that I call “the crispy hash browns”. You see, my favorite part of hash browns is the crispy part at the top. (And really, isn’t everyone’s?) The part underneath is okay, but I think I eat it mostly because, well, I already ate the crispy part. And so it is with most games. The learning part of the game is the crispy hash browns. It’s the best part of the experience. But once you eat through it, you have to learn to live with the non-crispy part. And it can be good. But deep in your heart you know it will never be the crispy part.”
– Mark Rosewater, The Answer Lies Within
Novelty has a cost.
This game that we all love to play is constantly ever-changing, as new sets get released. The game is always changing, an ever-mutating beast that one could argue it is impossible to truly understand. Every new spoiler season, we hear the same things:
- Sorin is broken
- Holy crap! I need! NOW!
- the green cards are going to be kick A**
- that Mythic Werewolf…soo….much….win….
- THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST
- i think i’m in love
- This card is insane.. FLYING .. HASTE AND INDESTRUCTIBLE… for 4 .. There is not cards like this…
- OMFG BROKEEEEN!!!
(These are actual comments I took from Facebook)
We’ve all done it at some point. Everyone has that card that they thought was going to be super amazing, and then it wasn’t. We all have our own little ‘pet cards’ that we tried to make great.
Here’s the danger:
– Because Magic is released in sets, cards in these sets have to work well with each other. The design teams ensure that the themes in the set (and block) all build off each other. There will be ‘build-around-me’ cards which work in this theme.
– Since many of these cards are new, many players will incorrectly estimate the power level of these cards, since most people aren’t good evaluators of new cards (myself included).
– These new cards will seem to work really well together.(they have literally been designed to do so) Likely very little real playtesting will get done with these new decks, filled with these new cards. This will result in under-powered decks.
– These decks will lose to people playing streamlined decks with few or no new cards. Then, people will defend their creations tooth and nail, issuing disparaging remarks like ‘you wouldn’t understand, net-decker’ or ‘at least I build my own decks’, delivered with the smallest of sneers, for good measure.
– When thinking about the deck after the event, the thoughts are along the lines of ‘how do I make this card work better in this deck?’ instead of ‘should I be playing this card?’ or even ‘should I be playing this deck?’. Changes are made to the deck, and the cycle repeats itself.
This. Is. A. Trap.
Now let me help you out of it, with simple mathematics.
As of this writing, there are 1021 different cards available in Standard. Dark Ascension will add 158 new cards, minus 2 reprints already in Standard ([card]Fling[/card] and [card]Divination[/card]). This will bring the total to 1177. 156/1177 = 13.25 %.
So, while it’s probably all you’re thinking about, because it’s new, and cool, this is still just a little over one eighth of all the cards available to you. Look back at your brew. How many Dark Ascension cards are there?
Probably a lot more.
This is one of the traps. Because these cards are shiny and new, we want to play with them right away. However, we would be more wise to slow down, and take a second or third look at these cards.
So you’ve found some cool interaction, and you’ve built a deck around it. Unfortunately, while you’re setting up your “combo”, your opponent is interacting with you. Then they kill you.
How many reactive cards have you included in your deck?
Probably not enough.
Let’s give your new find the benefit of the doubt – you have found the “most broken interaction evar!” [sic] If it was actually broken, what do you think would have happened in Development, or in the Future Future League, inside Wizards?
They probably would have caught it.
In most of the “Pro” set evaluations, have you noticed how many cards they dismiss, almost right away? This isn’t an accident. They are being honest, and answering the question: “How good is this card?”
Here is how a good deckbuilder builds a “new archetype” when a new set comes out:
[deck title=Patrick Chapin’s R/G Werewolves]
[creatures]
4 Daybreak Ranger
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Immerwolf
2 Instigator Gang
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Reckless Waif
4 Wolfbitten Captive
[/creatures]
[spells]
4 Full Moon’s Rise
3 Gut Shot
3 Moonmist
[/spells]
[lands]
8 Forest
8 Mountain
4 Copperline Gorge
2 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Rootbound Crag
[/lands]
[/deck]
– As written about here.
And how many new cards from Dark Ascension does it use?
Three creatures, and this is for a linear tribal deck.
This is how you build to win. There are people at Wizards whose job it is to make sure each individual set’s power level stays in line with the other sets. That means if you’re just jamming cards from the new set (with a couple other utility cards sprinkled in, for value), you are selling yourself short. You’re trying to battle Standard decks while playing, essentially, a Block deck. By the numbers, you are supposed to lose that battle.
– Yes, yes, I know this deck was built only as a starting point. In addition, the addition of Infect to the last block created a subset of cards that don’t carry over and interact very well, so there will be more newer-set-cards than usual. Also, there would most likely be a couple Dark Ascension cards in the sideboard, that’s fair to say. But my point remains valid! This is the kind of restraint we would be wise to show, when starting our brewing.
All that I have told you so far is well and good, but there’s a second, more subtle thing to look out for on set release, and this is what separates the men from the boys:
Cards (and strategies) that make other cards (and strategies) better.
My favourite term for this group of cards is “enablers”.
The best example for how this is supposed to work came to us from our favourite group of Pros (ChannelFireball) roughly one year ago, at PT Paris. The new card?
[card]Sword of Feast and Famine[/card].
This card made Caw-Blade into a real deck choice, upgrading the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Caw-Go into an unstoppable killing machine (Flores calls it the best Standard deck of all time) that would eventually have its 2 best cards banned. So how do we (attempt to) do this? Look at the enablers, and see how the format is going to move.
In no particular order, here are some things to watch for in this new format:
[card]Lingering Souls[/card]
If this card becomes prevalent, this makes [card]Dissipate[/card] much better, and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] into [card]Dissipate[/card]. B/W tokens is a new deck to watch out for, which means [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] gets much better. [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card]’s BFF ([card]Glissa, the Traitor[/card]) also gets better. [card]Whipflare[/card], an underplayed card, gets even better as well. Maybe even [card]Corrosive Gale[/card]? I can see it getting to that point.
[card]Evolving Wilds[/card]
It’s embarrassing how much almost every deck needed this. This is an amazing get for 3+ colour control decks, and 2 colour enemy-coloured decks. Grixis control in particular seems like it can see more play if the mana gets better. Esper control can also get a little more aggressive with their card choices.
[card]Faithless Looting[/card]
Another card for Grixis. Any Grixis list I would build would have 4 of these in it. Simply absurd in power level for that kind of a deck. I’m pretty sure this goes in almost every Red deck in Standard, even Mono-Red lists that run [card]Chandra’s Phoenix[/card].
[card]Havengul Lich[/card]
Right now, someone is drooling over the interaction between this guy, [card]Necrotic Ooze[/card], and a fair number of bad combos (perhaps [card]Heartless Summoning[/card] and [card]Perilous Myr[/card], which is also a trap!). I would like to try and persuade you otherwise, good sir. If your win condition is trying to combo off, the rest of the combo pieces (other than the Lich) are essentially dead in your hand when you don’t have the Lich. Without the Lich, your deck is much worse than your opponent, and any competent opponent will kill you before you can draw it, or counter it or use removal to kill it when you do. I actually like the Lich in a control deck, as a one or 2 of, in a deck with [card]Forbidden Alchemy[/card] that would naturally fill the graveyard. Perhaps in Grixis, where you can rebuy your Olivias and Titans, but you don’t need to do this to win. This way, you’re not dead to a [card]Despise[/card]+[card]Surgical Extraction[/card].
[card]Séance[/card] & [card]Sudden Disappearance[/card]
The card you should be thinking of right now, is of course: [card]Sundial of the Infinite[/card]. There are already a lot of cards I think can go well with Sundial: [card]Venser, the Sojourner[/card] (target your own [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] or [card]Leonin Relic-Warder[/card]), [card]Glimmerpoint Stag[/card], [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] (lose your post-combat main phase, keep the Angel), plus: Sundial stops so many end of turn shenanigans. EOT [card]Moorland Haunt[/card] activations, [card]Forbidden Alchemy[/card], [card]Think Twice[/card], Snapcasters, etc. These all don’t resolve, since you have the Sundial. Similar to Geist’s use case: you can stop undying triggers that arise from your opponent blocking with Undying creatures.
All that being said: how do we know [card]Sundial of the Infinite[/card] isn’t a trap? Any deck trying to use this concept would have to pass the tests:
- Is it interacting with the opponent? Most first passes of decks like this are too inwardly focused.
- The opposite side of the same coin – can you close out games? Decks need to have a sufficient density of threats, to put the game away.
- Is it fast enough? Most brews tend to be too slow, and will lose to the existing metagame’s decks.
- If there is a combo, do each of the pieces do something on their own, that is worth close to a card? If one piece does nothing with out the other, it’s probably too fragile.
- Does it do something unique, that isn’t done better by an existing deck? If the answer is no, sometimes you just look for a way to use your new ‘tech’ in the existing deck.
- Can you regain the tempo lost by investing mana and a card in something that isn’t directly killing your opponent?
It’s entirely possible that [card]Seance[/card] and [card]Sudden Disappearance[/card] aren’t constructed playable. This is just something I have my eye on. For the record, I would put Sudden Disappearance in the deck I have brewing in my brain but not Seance. The reason is that you can gain value targeting your opponent (sick tokens, bro) or yourself (ETB effects). Again, it may be too slow, this should come out in the testing. One thing that this deck needed that has been provided in this set: [card]Tower Geist[/card] (creature-based ETB card draw – we miss you, [card]Sea Gate Oracle[/card])
By the way, for anyone who builds this deck, I have already named it: “Stack Your Triggers.”
[card]Strangleroot Geist[/card]
Anyone who has been reading articles in the past little while has already heard enough about this guy. But man is he good! Especially with [card]Birthing Pod[/card]. Are there finally enough good cards to make [card]Birthing Pod[/card] truly viable? We’ll see. Undying in general seems quite strong with Pod (surprise surprise).
[card]Gravecrawler[/card]
Did you know [card]Glissa, the Traitor[/card] was a Zombie? Did you know that [card]Skinrender[/card] is also a Zombie? Also, it seems insane with [card]Smallpox[/card] and [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card]. Not to mention [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card] if the deck is black enough.
That’s all I have to say about Dark Ascension for now, other than a big “Thanks for a job well done, Wizards”.
Thanks for reading!
Johnathan
fightingmongoose on Magic Online
@JohnMBent on Twitter
BONUS:
My Standard UB Blade list that has been doing quite well for me, pre Dark Ascension:
[deck title=UB Blade]
[creatures]
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Bloodline Keeper
[/creatures]
[spells]
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Black Sun’s Zenith
2 Think Twice
4 Forbidden Alchemy
2 Sword of War and Peace
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
4 Mana Leak
2 Dissipate
2 Vapor Snag
2 Despise
2 Tribute to Hunger
[/spells]
[lands]
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Ghost Quarter
6 Island
5 Swamp
[/lands]
[sideboard]
2 Curse of Death’s Hold
2 Ludevic’s Test Subject
2 Dissipate
2 Spellskite
1 Batterskull
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Mental Misstep
1 Go for the Throat
[/sideboard]
[/deck]
To anyone who tries out this deck: Mulligan to make sure you have action on turn 2 or earlier ([card]Think Twice[/card] doesn’t count). Standard is as fast as it’s ever been, thanks to the Delver decks.
Against the slower decks, [card]Ludevic’s Test Subject[/card] is your [card]Delver of Secrets[/card]: play him early, use any extra mana to level him up, use your counters to protect him.
Johnathan Bentley has been diagnosed with Brewer’s Disease and as such is compelled to try new things, rather than stick with boring ‘stock’ decklists. Aside from winning CMT Ottawa 2011, he has yet to put up an incredibly notable finish – this makes him: Under the Radar.
