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Business is About to Pick Up
Wow.
Everyone was wondering if
Darksteel was going to have any major affect on the
standard tournament scene. I think we have a simple,
yet resounding, "YES!"
We all knew that goblins
were a good deck. We also have to deal with the fact
that they got a little bit better. Goblins are good.
OK...NEXT!
Maybe the new weenie
surprise is the return of the elf decks. Yeah, they
love the good ol' Skullclamp too. OK, so the problem
we have here is that goblins are lurking around every
corner. This scares the elves a little bit. But at
the same time, the elves seem to beat up on Affinity.
This creates a very interesting scenario. I guess
elves are OK if they have Steely Resolve or some spell
giving creature bonuses to stop their creatures from
dying to the Goblin Sharpshooter.
Look at the above
paragraph. I've made mention of the deck we all hate
to play against. Yep, Affinity. This deck was only
OK, but now it's received a huge boost. Don't worry
about Affinity decks countering your spells anymore.
The popular thought on these decks is that the good
ones don't run counterspells any longer. Truthfully,
why should they. The new versions pack a lot more
damage that can take you by surprise. With help of
Disciple of the Vault and Arcbound Ravager, they bring
the beats bigtime.
Make no mistake about the
Arcbound Ravager by the way. This guy is the real
deal. There are some arcbound decks that use this
guy. The Ravager offers a lot of options to the decks
that it is in. You have to be a bit wily to stop this
angry artifact man. If you see one hit the board
early, don't take him lightly. That dude can
seriously cause issues later in the game. Strange as
it is, the Arcbound Ravager is arguably more important
than Broodstar is to the deck.
What other cards are
making a mark? Hrm...here are some good ones: Leonin
Shikari, Sword of Fire and Ice, Auriok Steelshaper
(OK, he's Mirrodin). Waitaminute. These are all in
the same deck. White Weenie is definitely rearing its
ugly head again. There are still some arguments over
which version of this deck is the one to be worried
about. There are some with Exalted Angel, some with
Dawn Elemental, and some with both. Who knows what's
going on with these decks? I certainly don't. You
can expect to see a few popping up at a tournament
near you though.
Then of course, there is
the expected Blue/White Control. The only cards of
popular use that this deck seemed to have gained are
Pulse of the Grid and Pulse of the Fields. If you
take another look though, Pulse of the Grid isn't even
in that many versions of the deck. It's actually
turned out to be a little weak. However, Pulse of the
Fields has turned out to be quite good.
White is definitely en
vogue this season as the control color of choice.
There are Monowhite decks and even Green/White control
decks. Both of these pose a reasonable threat. The
only downside these versions of control have is
Patriarch's Bidding. If you are playing either of
these, you have to be real careful when trying to play
around bidding or it could be game over.
Green isn't stuck out
there alone though. Green/Red beats seems to be
making an appearance on the tournament scene. This is
mainly in the form of Beast-based decks. These guys
pack a punch. The life gain in conjunction with
Contested Cliffs can be really lethal. Many people
aren't giving these big beasts a second look, but I'd
rethink that. All it takes is a Ravenous Baloth to
the dome a few times to change your mind. I think
anything with green in it right now is taking
advantage of both Troll Ascetic and Viridian Zealot.
Also, Green/Black Recursion, a.k.a. Cemetery, a.k.a.
The Rock, should also fall into the category of green
decks that you need to be on the lookout for.
One of my favorite
surprises as of late are the mono-red landkill decks.
Now, these don't look like your normal monored decks.
These include cards like Avarex and Arc Slogger. No,
I'm not joking. These decks are being played and are
serious business. They are cheap to build and easy to
play. This makes them perfect for the average
Regionals player.
And finally, there are
still black decks trying to fight there way to the
top. Right now, there are two popular decks using
black. The first is monoblack control. This deck is
a pretty easy one to figure out. It has lots of
creature removal, only a couple of creature finishers,
and of course Consume Spirit. The other black deck is
the ever popular Zombie deck. Zombies did get the
help of Nim Abomination, so that it now has the
ability to fight with sizable creatures early in the
game. Both decks are trying to make use of Greater
Harvester. Neither of these decks seems to have
busted open any tournament scenes, but it doesn't mean
that they can't.
I think it's really neat
to see that the two latest Magic sets can have such a
large impact on the tournament environment. There are
a lot of singles that move for all of these tier one
decks and a ton more that are hot movers for the tier
two decks. Even casual players have found cards worth
buying up from recent sets.
Right now, the power level
of the Standard environment is the highest it's been
in a while. I will even put myself out there and say
that it's the strongest it's been since Invasion Block
was standard legal. That's been quite a while.
Anyway, before I forget,
let me handle my column's weekly business.
Let's open up with a Bad
Play of the Week.
This one comes to us from
Martin Lankester:
I was playing a casual
game and I was playing mono black zombies. I had just
killed a Phage, the Untouchable. This was great since
I had five zombies and a Gravespawn Sovereign on the
table. I thought, "Oh yes! If i get the Phage, I can
kill him and win since he doesn't have any creatures."
So I make a plan to tap five zombies and steal my
opponent's Phage. When I get Phage under my control,
my opponent points out that I just lost. I was quite
ashamed. I got laughed at quite and lot and I have
never made that mistake again since.
This week I am offering a
bonus feature of a SECOND...that's right, all for the
low cost of $0, a SECOND bad play of the week.
This one comes to us from
Jessee Evans:
I'm Playing a B/U
Rat Prison of my own design, my opponent is playing
G/w Control with Troll Ascetics. I've lost game one
and I know that only 4 of his cards worry me: the
Troll Ascetics. I cannot stop them if I don't
counter them, I have no other outs against the
Trolls and he got 2 of them game one. I board in
extra counters to deal with them.
Game 2, I take my
6th no-land mulligan in 4 rounds, my 3rd double
mulligan. I let this frustrate me, and it throws me
off my game as you will see. I keep Island, Mana
Leakx2, Boomerangx2.
Turn one is mine,
Island, Go.
He Plays forest,
Birds, Go
I rip Delta, Play
it, Sac for Island, say go. (first mistake, should
bounce birds to regain some tempo or not sac the
delta yet or both)
He Lays a Plains and
Plays a Troll Ascetic. The guy next to me starts on
a "how lucky" rant, I turn and agree with him, untap
my lands in disgust ready to concede. THEN I
remember my 2 mana leaks.
Wow.
Well, here's hoping
I can learn from it and that it at least made you
laugh.
I've noticed that
several people remember their worst plays a lot
better than their best plays. This is a good thing
in some regards though, since players can learn from
the mistakes that stand out and embarrass them a
little.
I was sitting around
thinking about this a couple of days ago and I
wondered why the good plays are harder to remember.
It's because it's simply harder to identify a good
play. Sometimes, you make the only play that seems
logical, so it doesn't stand out. But sometimes a
perfectly timed play can set up the game winning
spell. Everyone also has a slightly different
opinion of what constitutes a good play. Almost
everyone's description of a bad play is the same.
No real strategy lies in this fact. It's just an
interesting tidbit of information to wrap your mind
around.
I also noticed that I've
been focusing my card of the week choices on mostly
constructed play (more specifically, standard). So
this week, I'm going to give you two cards that are
both good in Mirrodin Block Limited.
Card #1: Chromatic
Sphere
This card is a bit
unassuming. If you are playing a monocolored deck
and come up short a card or two, this is a great
space filler. Drawing that extra card is almost as
effective as playing one less card in your deck. If
you are playing multiple colors, it's just one more
way to ensure that you have the mana that you need
when you need it. The extra card just becomes a
luxury at this point.
Card #2: Leonin Bola
This a card that I
always see the good players putting into their
limited decks (myself included). I think that the
less experienced player passes on this card because
of sheer lack of understanding of how best to take
advantage of it. This is a card that requires
patience. IF you fall back into a game plan of
using the Leonin Bola, you don't really want to get
aggressive except for when you are ready to deal the
deathblow to your opponent. IT can be a great
tool. It can clear a nasty block out of the way.
You can take your opponent's option of using a
specific tap required ability to use. You can stop
a scary creature from coming at you. There are a
lot of things you can do with this. Just take your
time and play around with it.
My strategy tip of the
week this week is a greatly overlooked bit of
information (in more ways than one). You need to
review your facts. If someone comes up to you and
says that Deck A beat Deck B 80% of the time or
better, examine the results closely. How good is
the players giving you the information? What
versions of the deck ware we talking about? Who was
playing each deck? Those are all important things
to know. When someone walks into my store and
reports testing results, sometime I give them a
second look. Other times I look at the strength of
each deck involved. And there are still other times
that the variables involved are so drastic that I
ditch the information altogether. Relying on bad
facts is a quick way to end up ill prepared for a
major tournament.
And on that note, I'm
all done here.
Until next time,
DeQuan Watson
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