Tag Archives: standard

Magical Monday 1.19.2015

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Like every other person that writes about Magic on the planet i want to talk up the new set and how they apply to my pet deck. Dictate of the Defecting Palm as a refresher, here is the list.

4 Deflecting Palm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Anger of the Gods
2 Searing Blood
1 Crater’s Claws
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Fated Conflagration
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Dictate of the Twin Gods
2 Circle of Flame
23 lands
4 r/w temples
4 r/w pain lands
2 r/w/u tru lands
rest mountains

My current sideboard is full of things to deal with Whip of Erebos and token makers like Hording Outburst and Goblinside. Guess i am also rocking a few Arc Lightnings.

After more then a few reps with this deck over this many months, i have taken note of its faults. Namely the lack of card filtering ie the tendency for it to flood out. It is a funny balance right, you are totally dependent on this 5 mana enchantment to finish the game so you want enough mana to cast it and then win out on the back of blowing people’s mind. Or blowing our wad to stabilize and then hunting for a win con.

However looking at Fate Reforged we have a great answer to not just one of issues but both!

Filtering and another win con all in one. Just happens to also be immune to sorcery speed removal and if the opponent uses a removal spell on this guy then i guess i will just have to try to not piss myself laughing.

Arcbond, is also another great one. Picture this it is the end of turn 5 and you flash in Dictate on to a board full all that is left in your hand is this guy, a land and some kind of sweet burn spell. Arcbond your Rhino, Anger your team you take 12. Pass.

What do you think?

<3s

Magical Monday 12.29.14

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Welcome to the last Magical Monday of 2014, hope your holiday was solid and may your new year be better then this one was. And now Magic.

Some time last week on one of my Facebook groups i pondered the possibility of a Trail of Mystery/Secret Plans constructed deck in today standard. It feels a little far fetched but keep an open mind for a moment while we knock out a fast list.

4 Trail
4 Plans

4 Ruthless Ripper aka Free Black morph
4 Temur Charger aka Free Green morph
4 Dragon’s Eye Savants aka Free Blue morph
4 Grim Haruspex aka Black draw when a dude dies morph
4 Rattleclaw Mystic

4 Ghostfire Blade
4 Sultai Charm

This is the 4 piles of 9 we need for a 36/24 split. Aka the normal 60/40 spell/land split where i start every build. But the deck just doesn’t have any real gas and with Trail helping us both insure we hit our land drops and smoothing our mana i just feel like as long as we are base G/U/B we might as well have some FUN!

21 lands
3 Villainous Wealth

Snap!

But is that enough to take this deck from fine to FINE? I don’t know. I bet you a dollar that 4 Sagu Maulers wouldn’t be an issue. I think that the chargers could go for some much needed gas to power things up. And cutting one or two Blades for Abzan Charms wouldn’t suck either. But really we could splash 1 or 2 of any basic land and have a reasonable shot at running just about any morph or charm you would like to run. Want some sick out of the board teck? Jeskai Charm or Icefeather Aven or some of those crazy planeswalkers?

I don’t know if i am brave enough to build this with actually cards but i feel this deck would cost less then 10 tixs on Magic online and that just might be the place to give it a try. I just need to get my account unlocked…

<3s

Magical Monday 12.1.2014

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Once again welcome to Magical Monday hope that your Thanksgiving was a good one. Reports of Walgreen’s sweet Mtg sale is spreading like wildfire. So much so that people are going to Walmart as asking for a price match because of a lack of product left at Walgreens. And while Walmart doesn’t have to it does meet all their price matching points and they should. Two packs for 3.80, is a good deal.

Okay that is enough of that, lets talk about a few things about my last post. I feel about 2 inches tall. I didn’t read every word on Fated Conflagration and it turns out that i should have as it doesn’t hit players. That “p” word is in fact planeswalker… Damn.

Also I ordered up 3 Deflecting Palms $1 a piece no problem. I looked at Stokes and they want $5 a piece. WTF? But while not… If you can find them in stock anywhere you can order them for $5. I will just plan on winning a playset this month.

So lets look at a build.

 

4 Deflecting Palm
3 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet

4 Anger of the Gods
2 Arc Lightning
3 Jeskai Charm
3 Mantis Rider
4 Goblin Rabblemaster

1 Fated Conflagration
4 Stoke the Flames

2 Dictate of the Twin Gods
3 Dig Through Time

23 lands
4 r/w temples
2 r/u temples
4 r/w pain lands
4 r/w/u tru lands
2 u/w fetchlands
3 mountain
2 island
2 plains

I feel that this deck does everything the mono red deck does but adds in the one of the best cards available in Dig. Dig lowers the need to have 4 Dictates. One of the issues i had was having two many dictates in hand and not enough action and sometimes you just need 2 more burn spells to finish a game and digs just equals action. The other thing that really got me about the deck was the lack of options when dealing with some situations. And i think that Jeskai Charm adds a ton of flexibility to the deck. There was at least one point where had i had the option to give my team +1/+1 and life link would have won a game even earlier or saved me vs Travis.

Thoughts?

<3s

Magical Monday 11.24.2014

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Dictate of the Twin Gods can be a real magic card if you aren’t afraid of maths or mana flood. Below is the deck i took to my local shop for a win a box tournament we had last Thursday night. It was a ton of fun for a short 4 rounds of play with a fair reward on the line for a small entry fee. The deck was inspired by Conley Woods’s Dictate of the Twin Gods Combo deck. While he didn’t have the best run in this video set i think he showed how the deck could win from out of the blue and take a tournament by surprise.

4 Deflecting Palm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Anger of the Gods
3 Arc Lightning
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Fated Conflagration
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Dictate of the Twin Gods
2 Circle of Flame
23 lands
4 r/w temples
4 r/w pain lands
2 r/w/u tru lands
rest mountains

So how did it play? 3/1 good enough for 3rd. Not the win i was hoping for but good enough i am going to keep it together and retool/find the rest of its missing cards. I had to bum a few key cards for this tournament and i need to make some changes for the future.

R1, was a win when i should have lost. G1, I got the land flooded right the heck out. I am not afraid to admit i thought that i might have made an error in deck choice. G2, I drew a good mix of lands and spells and ran my opponent over. G3, I thought i was done. But got a window to throw a 5/7 Courser back at its owner for 20(taking him to 3) damage (thanks to Dictate + Deflecting Palm) going to 2 off a 3/3 lion. Thankfully i had scryed a burn spell to the top on my upkeep and put that game away. It was real close had my opponent monstroused his lion i would have lost.

R2, Was vs Travis. He had loaned me some of the missing cards and knew the idea behind my list but not the details of the 75. G1, Once again i tasted the land flood and lost the turn before i tried to go for the kill thanks to an attacking Sarkhan. G2, I resolved a Dictate during my own end phase as he went for a dig through time and hit him for 10 damage and scrying for 2  with a Fated Conflagration taking him to 1 life. He kept a Sarkhan and game in for lethal thanks to my Dictate+ his Lightning Strike.

R3, was short and sweet vs a Jeski combo/weenie hybrid. Both games i burned his only men down resolved a Dictate on turn 5 and followed up with double Fated Conflagrations on 6 and 7.

R4, was very fun as this was the only other games where i needed to cast Deflecting Palms, Heroic W/U. My opponent got to play in to my main deck Angers and once his men were too large for angers they when back to his face again and again.

Bonus round, While waiting for the rest of the games to finish i played against a B/W weenie deck. Damage came in fast until a sweeper showed up like Anger or Arc Lightning even one of two main deck Circle of Flame.  Then got to a point where burn could go to the face for the win.

There was a game where i was dead. Or i should have been dead. I had double Dictate and a Deflecting Palm vs his 6 1/1s tokens while i was at 14 on turn 5. I flashed in a Deflecting Palm at the end of his turn because i had to go for it. Turn six played a land an passed. Took 12 from his 1/1s going to 2 he played a 2/1 and passed. I cast a Magma Jet end of his turn pushing down 2 more lands and then pealing another going to 7 lands in play. My hand is Dictate + Deflecting Palm, figuring that i would just draw the game out he attacks… with just the 2/1. Wow, i get to win. Flash in Dictate #2 and then palm his 2/1. 2×2=4 4×2=8 palm 8×2=16 16×2=32 to the face. Had he attacked with any other man i would have had to draw the game but woot for me.

This deck is not perfect, but there is a ton going for it. Good mana if a little floody at times. I would like a way to get to 5 or even 7 reliably but then never draw another land again or a way to use extra lands. Something like Tormenting Voice if it was an instant would be great. There is also the option to go Jeski for the charm and your own digs. That would let us have less Dictates in the list but still find them a fair amount of games. While increasing the number of 4 damage burn spells and allowing us some other options/tricks. Another perk of adding in blue mana is the option to add in more scry lands. Magma Jet was the deck MVP allowing me to push away extra lands once they were no longer needed was great, and more scry would be welcome.

Circle of Flame was both the worse card and one of the best. So hard to explain why i chose to run 2 in the main vs just having them in the sideboard and i am not sure i can other then to say they can win some game ones that we should loose and when they are bad they are super easy to cut. There is a card that i ended up leaving out of the deck and i am thinking that it might have to work its way in the 75 someplace, Spite of Mogis. This is should be a great card in a 27 instant & sorcery deck. Card is almost Swords to Plowshares in this current standard.

As always, please leave a comment if you have feedback.

<3s

Magical Monday 11.10.2014

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I am trying something new for today’s post, i gave myself 30 mins to put a fresh 60 together and to write a few words about it. And i don’t have a lot of time left to write so bare with me.

The List:

4 Magma Spray

4 Lighting Strike
4 Magma Jet

4 Stoke the Flames
4 Fated Conflagration

4 Hording Outburst
4 Goblinslide
4 Rabble Master

3 Purphoros
2 Lightning Volley

23 Mountains

Going wide is a real option again in constructed formats. Mass removal is at a low, people are pushing for 3 or 4 colors decks and battle ship (okay more of build the fleet) magic is making waves. Nothing prays on decks like that like going wide fast.

5 mins left.

I don’t know if this deck is good or not but i do know that sticking a Purphoros is huge when you can make 4 guys the next turn for 4 mana and one card. We are loaded for bear, even 4/5 bears with horns as we can shoot them down for 1rrr and scry to boot. Over all this is just another one of those decks that looks great on paper but might not have the control elements that really make it work but we could make some cuts add in some one mana hand disruption spells and a few ways to make hero’s fall down and we could have a spicy R/B list.

I don’t have time to get into it but it also seems tasty.

As always comments are welcome and i will see you next week.

 

<3s

Magical (super late) Monday 10.27.14

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Sorry for the late post tonight but things are the nuts right now. The boy had his 15th bday on the 27th so that kept me away from the keys. Also I started a new job in addition to my other jobs of the Community Manager/Web guy for my local card shop.

I started this last Saturday (aka 3 days ago) so I have been giving it 110% of my time trying to get a website up and running, fixing things like Goggle’s info and getting the other Social Media pages in order. I still need to get about 5 more pages of content ready to go just to cover the basic website. And I need to make some phone calls to get some much needed traction with some of the game stores in the surrounding area. Most of them have next to no web presence and one of the things we are offering is allowing those stores to create a Goggle calendar and I will add those to our calender we are publishing on our site. More events everyone is more fun for all. And it wouldn’t hurt to have them go to our site and see our events when they go to look at their local shop events. 🙂

So with that in mind lets talk about actual magic for a moment.

There is a SCG Super IQ this weekend in Witcha, and I got a slew of players planing to get out and battle for glory. And they all seem to want my thoughts on their builds. I am honored to be one of those people that others can go to for to for advice.

Some of my personal thoughts on standard at the moment are as follows.

3 color control decks are not great right now, namely, Esper control. I personally feel that wanting a BB spell on 2 a 1UU spell on 3 and a 4WW spell on 6 is real hard on the mana. And I just don’t like it.

Agro decks on the other hand are sweet and the complex/ painful mana base can do real work.

Oh and yes I am really impressed with the boss sligh like decks that are rocking some events right now.

But there is still lots of room for rogue decks, my own bluemud deck is coming along nicely if I do say so myself. I am tempted to try and go Jeski Mud but I am unsure if that level of out of the box thinking is really needed. But that is the list I have for you all tonight.

2 Ghostfire Blade
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Ensoul Artifact
4 Ornithopter
4 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Seeker of the Way
2 Heliod’s Pilgrim
4 Mantis Rider
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Lighting Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Hour of Need
4 Darksteel Lands
4 Tri lands
4 U/W fetchlands
2 Mana Confluence
3 R/W pain land
2 islands
2 plains
2 mountain

I am not sure if it is good or right, but Hour of Need is amazing right now with all the removal floating around the format. But if i had the cards at the moment and i had to play something right now this would be it.

 

Thoughts?

<3s

Cheif of Skullhuntering your Face

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I feel that there is a super good agro deck out there and i think it plays a lot of warriors. Lets just throw cards at the wall and see what sticks.

All the cards i want to cram in to the deck are:
Thoughtseize
Despise
Ulcerate
Gods Willing
Hero’s Downfall
Bloodsoaked Champion
Herald of Anafenza
Chief of the Edge
Mardu Skullhunter
Oreskos Swiftclaw
Tymaret, the Murder King
Pain Seer and/or Grim Haruspex
Mogis’s Marauder

Sorin, Solemn Visitor

Possibly hanging in the sideboard
Chained to the Rock
Murderous Cut
Dark Betrayal
Phyrexian Revoker
Staff of the Death Magus

So numbers/ what makes the cut?

4 Thoughtseize
2 Despise
2 Ulcerate
1 Gods Willing
4 Hero’s Downfall

4 Bloodsoaked Champion
2 Herald of Anafenza
4 Mardu Skullhunter
4 Chief of the Edge
0 Oreskos Swiftclaw
2 Tymaret, the Murder King
4 Pain Seer and/or Grim Haruspex
2 Mogis’s Marauder

3 Sorin, Solemn Visitor

22 lands
Painlands
Mardu Triland
Fetchs
Lifegain lands
Basics

Idk, i will say i had a more controlling version of this deck and it was very good.  Ideally this deck would play a 1 drop, followed up with a Skullhunter or 2 some other discard spell, then lay on the beats while keeping the field clear thanks to suicide guys and light removal/discard combo. I don’t know if it is right for the meta atm. But after watching a ton of Abzan decks win out over the last two weekends i am leaning towards yes as long as you keep 4 Dark Betrayals in the sideboard and keep the pressure up.

<3s

Magical Monday 10.20.14

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Punted.

 

Sometimes you win. Other times you lose. And once and a while you just punt super badly and you really lose.

 

It was Friday Night Magic last Friday (clearly), i was mostly tired, hungry about to piss myself and it was intense. The match was tied up 1/1 i was at 5 with 7 mana and 2 fliers in play to my opponents 12 life and 3 two power dudes. And i had a plan. It was my turn and i drew an island i could restock my Illusory Angel and  a Monstrous Growth, attack for 6 and drop my blocker. Weather the storm on the crack back  and win through whatever removal spell my opponent could have and win.

I look at my hand mid combat and i realize that this is not an Island.

Shit. Scroll back to the top of the page and look at the image of Charlie doing his best Samius impression.

 

Right away i knew that i just screwed up and lost the game. I knew what i should have done and played it safe and played my morph and the other 3 drop that was hanging out in my hand with a safe attack for 3. Then go for the win next turn….

 

What i did was let my opponent attack me to death and shook his had and landed well out side of the prize support. The Gurobo family crashed and burned for the night.

It is hard to be  good sport. But at the same time i loved watching Ari Lax play out his top 8 at the pro tour. So animated and worthy of support and well wishes. But there seems to be a conversation happening right now about how to be a good winner and good loser. In my mind there is no harm in someone having excitement bursting from the seams. When the magic gods smile upon you it can be hard to keep all that goodness contained. But here is the deal if you can’t take it, keep that shit contained. The golden rule is not just a suggestion it is a way of life.

That is all i got. Working on a ton of decks at the moment but none of them good. But i will get back to you if and when i have any ideas worth sharing.

 

<3s

Magical Monday 10.14.14

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One of the decks that both my kid and I had a lot of fun and/or success with was that tasty little Black/Red Young Pyro Control deck that I wrote about a while back. It was so good in the last standard that I often thought that I would port some variation of it to modern. But tonight I want to look at updating this masterpiece.

The old list more or less:
4 Young Pyo
4 Pain Seer
4 Nivmagus Elemental
2 Tymaret, the Murder King

4 Duress
4 Thoughtseize
3 Spite of Mogis
2 Bile Blight
3 Doom Blade
2 hero’s downfall
4 Lightning Strike
4 Mizzium Mortars

Khan Standard, like always here is the list of cards that make my maybe list.

Thoughtseize
Despise
Magma Spray
Ulcerate
Bile Blight
Lightning Strike
Magma Jet
Bloodsoaked Champ
Monastery Swiftspear
Mardu Skullhunter
Pain Seer
Goblin Rabblemaster
Goblinslide
Hero’s Downfall
Howl of the Horde

Lets look at some of the standout cards.
Thoughtseize and Despise are great right now. I think that Despise is ever better then Duress was in last year’s standard.
Goblinslide is not unlike a harder to kill if harder to get guys from Young Pyo.
Monastery Swiftspear and Bloodsoaked C is not unlike Nivmagus Elemental.
And if there is ever a deck that would make Howl of the Horde good this might be it.

So lets crunch some numbers.
4Thoughtseize
4 Despise
2 Magma Spray
2 Ulcerate
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
2 Bloodsoaked Champ
4 Mardu Skullhunter
4 Pain Seer
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Goblinslide
2 Howl of the Horde
22 lands
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Temple of Malice
2 Urborg
3 Mana Confluence
5 Swamp
4 Mountain
I do think I want the Bloodfell Caves but I really need as many lands as possible to come into play untapped but the life might just be needed.
So much potential.

<3s

Magical Monday 10.6.14

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I didn’t get to make it to last weeks FNM do to massive amount of real life bull shit. But i did make it in time to watch 2 or 3 matches of my deck for states the next day. I learned a lot but then got less then 2 hours of sleep due to that real life bullshit and ended up bailing on going because i just knew that i couldn’t play to the level i know that i can play at with that low amount of sleep and i didn’t want to burn the cash to play/eat/drive to just loose and wish that i didn’t go.

But this weekend is StarCityGames’ states and i hope to make that one.

Okay so back to watching those games on Friday, Dan (he borrowed my standard deck for FNM) was playing Brandon. Brandon was playing a Mardu deck that got my brain turning. And i have a rough list.

First thing i do is lower the curve a ton and cut a color. Now i am just Red/White and top the curve out at 3. And i want to focus on going wide and pure speed.

2 Herald of Anafenza
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Soldier of the Pantheon

4 Akroan Hoplite
4 War-Name Aspirant

4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos

4 Crowd’s Favor
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Titan’s Strength
4 Lightning Strike
2 Trumpet Blast

18 lands

4 Battlefield Forge
4 Mana Confluence
6 Mountain
4 Plains

I don’t know if it is good or not. Going to say maybe… I could see having 3-4 lands in the sideboard and Purphoros, God of the Forge to get some extra reach. Stroke the Flames might also need to be included in the main but i am not sure what to cut to work them in.

Thoughts?

<3s