A Super Secret Special Announcement!

This post happens to be a bit of a landmark for the SSMB:  it’s #150!  That’s a lot of content for a few guys writing in their spare time!  Thanks to Kenta and Larry for the content they’ve helped me provide and for our readers who enjoy the posts and stories we tell.

And as this is a bit of a landmark, I have decided to upgrade the blog a bit!

Remember that http://www.chadium.com will take you to the Super Secret Magic Blog?  This is still true:  although I’m just moving the blog onto my own hosted webspace, and the entire domain address will be slightly different.

http://www.reddening.wordpress.com will no longer work, and only take you to the old blog.

Of course, http://www.chadium.com will still provide you with direct access to the new blog!

BUT, you can now use: http://www.supersecretmagicblog.com as your direct access, super awesome domain of choice, if you wish..

Hope to see you all at the new site soon!

M12, Innistrad, Japan, FTV Legends and more!

First off,

My condolences to everyone in Japan, or to those who have relatives or know those who are affected by the Earthquake.  Our writer Kenta, is of course Japanese, and his relatives are all fine.  I had just booked a plane ticket to visit Tokyo the day before the earthquake, and I am unsure if I will still be able to visit.  Here’s to hoping that the long road to recovery will move quickly for everyone on the island.

In the meantime, a lot of new rumors are starting to pour in pertaining to future Magic products.  Later this summer, Legends are going to be all the rage – from the new ones we see in the Commander expansions to the  foil beauties in the latest From the Vault.  Since EDH is one of my favorite formats (as it’s an improved version of Highlander), I am a bit apprehensive as to what the new card pool invented specifically for EDH is going to do to alter the game.  I brought it up several times on the Magic Cruise with one of the Commander designers, Ken Nagle, who assured me they worked pretty hard to make sure the cards were fun, balanced and interesting – and Ken “I love the Fatties” Nagle is one of the kings of casual at the Wizards R&D, and his dislike for Spikes and spikey EDH decks is… shall we say…so intense that he made me look like a Spike by comparison whenever Jenara’s bant synergy deck reared its head (and let’s not even comment on when Arlo used Big Bluey…).

Long story short, I am eager for this summer’s release, and look with confidence for the first run of Commander sets.  A few of the cards are sure to become staples in the format.  Some may even see Eternal play, according to playtesting and speculation – and that would really drive up the price of 1-2 of the pre-cons if they sell well enough.  The generals spoiled so far are going to inspire some new deck-building from all of us.  I for one can’t wait to finally build a u/r deck that isn’t cheaty and based around Niv-Mizzet.  Niv just draws hate from friends and foes alike, and while U/R has always been a favorite color combo of mine, I haven’t had the heart to build with Niv or Jhoira – they’re just not “fun” in my kind of way.

Moving on…

Mirran/Phyrexian packs are irregular (no rares??)

I’m getting word from a midnight release event that the Mirran and Phyrexian packs aren’t necessarily 11 commons, 3 uncs and 1 rare. Some packs have as many as 3 rares in them – and others have zero rares, with a 4th uncommon added. So…. have fun losing to the guy who has 8 bombs in his deck tomorrow.
I will refrain from ranting until I see how this plays out tomorrow for myself..

Thanks Wizards.

Learning to let go of bad cards: An open letter

Dear Magosi,

You SUCK!

I’ve been wanting to tell you this since the moment I met you, but NOooo.. You were always there with your charm, decked out in foily goodness, with promise after promise of an extra turn.  I always thought to myself, “maybe this time will be the one! Maybe this time, I’ll get to take that extra turn with you” and we can revel in our newfound card advantage, our better board position, our game winning coup de gras!

And yet, you never got me there.  Not once.  I played you in EDH deck after EDH deck.  Who wants to ever skip a whole turn in EDH?  I mean, really? And I even played you in standard – you’re so great at teasing me: “C’mon, just play one of me! One is all you need! We can get there!  We can live the dream!”.  But you always came into play tapped. You always screwed me over when I needed a normal, everyday land.  And you never let me skip a turn without consequences! You said there wouldn’t be any! But there always were…

And so, I’m letting you go.  I’m cutting you from my EDH decks.  And don’t even think about getting back into Standard.

Sincerely,

Jay

I know how hard it can be to let go of bad cards.  I have had a love/hate relationship with Magosi, The Waterveil, ever since it was printed.  It’s just so alluring, right?? But no, Wizards was waaaaay to careful with this one.   When you really give a card a  good, careful read, and then playtest it, again, and again, and it doesn’t perform well, you have to cut it.  It doesn’t matter if at some point in the future there is potential for the stars to align, and the ideal scenario just comes together perfectly and you get to live the magical dream that is Magosi – if 99% of the time it’s just an Island that comes into play tapped and is frequently destroyed by opponents – well, it just plain sucks.

To other people reading this blog, you may say to yourself “well, duh! This card is garbage! I knew it all along, what is this guy’s problem?”

But to those people I say: hasn’t there ever been a card you just wouldn’t give up?  Something that just made your spidey senses tingle? (Gloomwidow, perhaps?)  I know you’ve had it.. Because not all cards that people tell you are just plain garbage really are!  Some cards that people laugh at turn into $10 or $20 cards overnight!  Frost Titan, for instance, is the latest latecomer to the Tier 1 scene, floating around everywhere for $3.00, which to some seemed way low, despite living in the shadow of its green Brethren.

The point is – you never really know if a card is all bad until you test it…  Thoroughly.  And all that time and effort can develop certain…attachments to a card – or to its potential to be good.  Sometimes, the timing just isn’t right.   And in other case, it turns out to be just plain bad.  And sometimes you need a push – whether it be from a pro-player, or a friend – someone who just says “you know what? This card is bad and you should feel bad for playing it”.  It’s tough love.  It’s necessary.  And that’s why I have this letter below, to share with you, and your friends – to give to those in need.

 

Dear [CARD NAME],

We’re through!

There, I said it.  I admit that this card is just plain bad.  It will never do the things I want it to.  It will never [CHEESY EXAMPLE OF AN IMPROBABLE SITUATION].  It will hurt me 99 times out of 100 I ever get to play it.  I vow to let it go, with the help of my friends, and I vow to move onward and find better, more playable cards to substitute for it.  I leave this card in good standing, without regret or ill will.  It is simply time to move on.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]

Feel free to reply with your own stories of cards you’ve loved but let go…

Poison drafts = free ratings points

The last 2 drafts at my local store, I’ve forced poison to ridiculous ends. For those of you not doing it, I highly recommend trying it. It’s pushed me back up into top 25 in the state for limited, and gotten my rating back to a free round bye in big events, despite my recent dive in constructed for forcing a Venser u/w deck when there were clearly other better builds. 🙂

Poison won’t be the nuts forever – there’s a good chance that Scars+2xBeseiged drafts will simply delute it as other “tribal” archetypes arise in the draft format. So, while you’ve still got a few weeks, go for it! Just reference my poison article from a few weeks back if you’ve got any questions…

Ironically, I’ve won both events with zero Untamed Might in the main, although I recommend not passing up on them like I did.  You always want at least 1, because you know you’ve always got a way to win in the deck somewhere.  Having 2 1-drop equipment is ideal, along with 2 removal spells, 13-14 infect creatures, 2-3 utility creatures, and a few cantrips or other combat tricks, whether they be spellbombs or my favorite – Instill Infection, which is excellent for poison, especially during combat.   It actually won me a few games by converting a regular creature trade into one where I save my threats and they lose everything. .. And against poison, that’s  GG. For the best non-infect utility creatures to fill in your deck, I prefer: Sylvok Replica, Painsmith, Skinrender, Golem Artisan, and Rust Tic.  Keep an eye out for them, as they fill in the gaps quite nicely if you don’t hit an uber-threshold of 18 Infect creatures…

Argent Sphinx, Argent Sphinx, where did you go?

Seems like there’s one card like this in every set… I lost a game to Argent Sphinx on the very first draft of Scars of Mirrodin I’d played, and yet, after drafting the set at least 10 times since, I have not seen a single one. The card had such power and speed – especially if it was powered out on turn 3! It only really dies to an early Arrest or a few instants if you’re caught without blue mana up, and I feel like it was one of the more powerful beatsticks in the environment…but it has been almost non-existent in my Scars environment – maybe others as well? I haven’t seen one in a deck, packed, passed – nor have I played against one, or even seen it in someone’s sideboard! – nothing!

Survival of the Fittest isn’t the real villain here…

Those who saw the banned and restricted list announcement from Wizards earlier this week may have also seen Erik Lauer’s article HERE on the MTG mother ship.  It’s an explanation of why Survival of the Fittest was banned.

It’s not really the most thorough explanation, in fact.  Erik attempts to explain the function of a card that is the “key component” of a deck.  For instance, “Survival decks” are called as such because the whole engine/deck is meant to have synergy with Survival of the Fittest.   When possible, Wizards does not want to kill off an entire deck by banning that key component – they prefer to ban other pieces of the combo (he says “combination”, and it just feels weird to me!) and leave the core components weakened, but intact.  The problem with Survival of the Fittest is, as Erik and also Kenta pointed out to me, that when you have Survival on the table, no creature draw is EVER a dead draw. A late game Steppe Lynx turns into a late game Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary (in Kenta’s example of Survival Zoo). Or as with most modern Survival decks… A Vengevine turns into… another Vengevine, until you’re ready to just… combo off and put them all into….play…?… wait a minute here!

The Standard Lull..

For those of us who think Standard is boring, and sub-par u/w and u/b control decks are dominating everywhere whilst sparkly Vampire decks are actually playing the part of the “good guys”, restoring a so-called balance to the meta-game by becoming the token aggro-deck (ok, so Boros, maybe is the token aggro deck – let’s call it a tie for now), and a silly, silly deck that runs 24 mana acceleration spells is ruling over most other builds… let’s think about the standard format in general, and what happens every time a new block comes out, and we only have 1 of 3 sets to work with…

Wizards has been laying the groundwork for two aggro decks – poison and Metalcraft. Will they ever be constructed playable? Or, is the worst to be feared? Is Metalcraft merely Wizard’s way of apologizing for Affinity?

Let’s hope that we’ll have some aggressive new cards to break the format up a bit.. With the spoiling of the Mirran vs Phyrexian card alliances, and an interesting pair of crusading knights, I am thinking that these new tribal builds may have some pretty powerful synergies… let’s hope that they’re constructed-worthy!

So, while Standard is just… a bit lullish, do what other good players do: play limited! Or, play a new, adventurous standard build! Use all cards from the new set, and find out what is ALMOST there, but not quite – and then expect the next few sets to fill in those pieces…

Get those Lux Cannons! Or Koth’s while they’re down to 30! Maybe Putrefax really is going to hold up to the hype? Who knows! Anyone’s guess is as good as mine..

The only way to tell is to build outside the box, and be ahead of the curve for when the next set is released..

Until then, I’m still working on my Venser the Sojourner deck (I feel like Kor Hookmaster is the new secret tech.. who’s with me?)

Larry’s Favorite EDH Cards #10: Wild Evocation

The perfect card for Big Shitty Naya, Wild Evocation stands as more than just a random chance to drop in a big creature.  It’s an amazing card that for some reason, doesn’t raise your threat level – it actually makes you friends across the table! Even as you watch your friends be forced to cast their Decree of Justice or Earthquake for zero, they somehow don’t mind;  maybe next turn, they’ll get to drop an Akroma into play for free!

The greatest play I’ve had with it was a turn 5 Wild Evocation in a 6 player game, where the next card revealed on my opponent’s upkeep was Armageddon.  He claimed that while normally, he wouldn’t have actually cast a card like Armageddon (why was it in his deck?? who knows..), he was forced to on this occasion.  The whole table laughed out loud and, in fact, it turned a hated card like Armageddon into a hilarious joke.  With Wild Evocation active, it was like a variation on Magic that we hadn’t seen in quite a while – the old Type 4 format that lets you play 1 big spell for free each turn!   So for the remainder of the game, my opponent’s left the Wild Evocation be, content to drop free cards into play.

It wasn’t until one player got a free Lurking Predators that the game really blew wide open.  Every time an opponent was forced to cast the spell if able, he got a free Predators trigger, and ended up with quite a few plays (especially with his Divining Top in play).  Yes, the vicious Predator Top combo, made more lethal by Wild Evocation.  All, a wonderful product of Big Shitty Naya.

Give this card a try at your local table!  It’s worth tapping out for…

Why Jace makes other Planeswalkers Cry

Today, Starcity revealed the full-art version of the new Tezzeret 2.0: Planeswalker Edition, probably appearing in a Mirrodin Besieged pack near you this winter.  Even Starcity Games was quick to get to the point:  this could be that black 4 mana cost Planeswalker we are all waiting for!

(Probably not)

But Jace has gone and done something bad.  Real bad.  He’s mind-sculpted everyone into thinking that each time a Planeswalker appears on the proverbial Battlefield, it’s going to be another $80 standard card (Jace and Tarmogoyf are best friends, BTW, and they hang out in their uptown apartment, acting cooler and wealthier than everyone else).  This is entirely unrealistic though, and even the big retail outlets know this.  Of course, they want you to think that any Walker has that chance.   Any ole’ PW could be the next Jace! They could be a shining star!  This couldn’t be further from the truth…

Mirrodin 2.0 had 3 planeswalkers, which, is good in some senses, because Starcity was able to sell each of them for $40-50 a piece, rather than stab us all in the face and declare Koth an outright $75 pre-sell all-star.  You see, 3 walkers means they could defer the price a bit towards a semi-normal, semi-rational starting point – 2 are inevitably going to drop, and 1 always rises to the top as THE chase rare.  But who knows which? (if forecasts are ever a sign, it’s the PW that costs the least mana and has the best way to protect itself).  So they could let Koth start at $40, and if he went up to $60 or some ungodly amount (c’mon he’s a mono red card for god’s sakes, he really can’t go that high!), all of the Koth they sold for less would be more than made up for by the pile of suckers who bought Venser and Elspeth for $40 a piece – see, ole Venser and Miss Tiriel were just puppets in Koth’s cause, they never had a real shot at going up to Jace-like proportions..

If, in the next set, we see only a single Planeswalker….well… expect him to start higher than $40.  Starcity doesn’t want to take the chance to miss another Jace bonanza (Presell him at $25? $35? Sure, whatever! Bargain! Fans everywhere kept lapping him up into the stratosphere, and SCG literally lost out on thousands of dollars) .  So they’re going to hype Mr. New-god Tezzeret up, keep him high, and wait as long as possible to lower his price, even while the market adjusts around him and drops to Ebay-like frighteningly low numbers.

What about environmental changes?  Things always heat up as more sets are released – other walkers get better and more relevant, right?  So….Venser is great. Don’t get me wrong – I love his ability and his style.  But, is there a deck for him in tier 1? Not quite.  Almost.  Soon, maybe?   Will Venser or Gideon or Miss Tiriel ever have their chance to pull an Elspeth and go from $15 back up to $40 again when they see play? Sure.  But will they ever be an all-star like Jace?  No.  Just reading a card carefully is all it really takes.  Here’s a simple equation.  If  CMC >= 5, $$$ <= $25.  If CMC <= 4, $$$>=$40.   Even Garruk was $30 a card for a while when he was so hot in standard and hadn’t been reprinted to all bejeesus.  And now that the core 5 have been established, it’s not often that we’ll see reprints of new walkers outside core sets.  AND, when we do (such as duel decks like Elspeth Vs Tezzeret), it will 100% guarantee that there is a new (read: expensive?) version coming down the pipeline and into your deck.

All I really want to say is:  Thanks, Jace.  Now every Planeswalker who appears will have not only entirely unrealistic expectations, it will have a completely absurd price structure on release (I mean, unless it is so obviously junk and unplayable that even Nicol Bolas wouldn’t waste his +3 on it).  Tell ‘Goyf I say hi, and ask if he still remembers me from his $2 dolla days in the ‘hood.