In The Thick Of The Evening

So it's Bloomburrow spoiler season and there's already a card I want to talk about, a lot. But, I think that it's time to go over some of the overarching themes of this blog. Because it's all tied together, and this one card, while simple, is subject to all the guiding principles that I use when playing Magic, in a big way.

These are what I'm going to call the Guidelines of this blog. They are the themes, maybe beliefs, that I try to apply when I'm building decks, playing games, theorizing, writing, everything. And these aren't hard and fast rules, and they are changing constantly and being tweaked a little bit to fit around formats and metagames and life. But ultimately, these are the fundamental drivers that dictate Magic for me, and I hope that even a piece of it works for you as well. Here we go.

1. We play one deck.

I break this guideline all the time, of course, but I think there's real value to playing one deck as much as you can. It's that you become an expert at that deck, over time, and it leads to advantages in experience that you'll have every time you sit down to play. No matter who I'm facing, I know that I know my deck better than they know theirs, and that in all likelihood I know the specific matchup better than they do too.

Also, that doesn't mean that you never change the cards in your deck, in fact the opposite. You'll have the experience to know that one specific card you're playing is not working and change that for something else, or maybe you want to shift the focus of the deck a little bit. For me, Jund is an evolving project, and there are sub-projects and offshoots of it, but the idea is to be constantly getting closer to the right recipe. More on that in #4.

2. Midrange.

I think it was Gerry Thompson who recently said that Jund is a good deck for making you feel like you have agency, which I definitely agree with because you're making a lot of decisions, but you actually make lots of decisions with all decks and some people just don't realize it. But what midrange decks truly do for you, the player who has given themselves this extra bonus experience, is the tools to beat whatever you're facing, and the ability to play different kinds of games based on what you feel you need to do. This is both in-game and and in deckbuilding. You can have high or low levels of synergy, aggression, control, card advantage, and can utilize them how you want in each game. Your deck is an extension of yourself, and your goal is to win the game, by whatever way looks like the best to you. Reid wrote an article a long time ago about choosing a deck to play in Legacy, and he basically said, play one deck all the time so you master it, and play a deck with Brainstorm. We basically do the same, except instead of Brainstorm we play Thoughtseize, the black Brainstorm.

Midrange also just lets you play whatever cards you think are the best. Ideally they fit alongside what you're doing, but that's not that hard because what you're doing isn't that focused. If a specific creature removal spell lines up great, then play it. If no one has answers to some creature, jam it. No rules. You're in charge.

3. It's okay to lose to decks, it's not okay to lose to cards.

This is basically an extension of "the graveyard trap" that I've talked about a lot, where some of the most powerful things you can do in Jund colors is gain card advantage using graveyard interactions, and if you pack your deck full of them, you'll end up losing to graveyard hate out of the opposing sideboard. You could be playing against a deck where you built your deck to beat it, you have a huge experience advantage, you're outplaying your opponent, and then you just lose to Rest in Peace. When you fold yourself into one dimension, you end up losing games you should be winning. When you play against a deck that is a tough matchup, like Enigmatic has been a tough one for me the last few years, then you'll often lose but the opponent just has an intrinsic advantage against you. They had to put in the work, i.e. play that deck specifically, in order to win that game. The same thing is true with other avenues you could take your midrange build. If a single card is going to stop your entire deck, then diversify your cards, because it's not hard to put Rest in Peace, or Shaper's Sanctuary, or whatever, into your sideboard.

4. Package System

Lately I've been building Jund decks with slightly different focuses, maybe not exactly micro-synergies but not macro-synergies either, and trying to line them up with the right metagames. Because we're a midrange deck, any specific card in our colors is a viable card to play, but even further than that, we want to be in the right place on what Zvi Mowshowitz calls the Metagame Clock. That's a complex topic in its own right, but the idea is that you want your cards and deck to be somewhere in a range of quick and cheap to slow and powerful. So, not only do you want to play the right cards, you want the mana curve, the mana access, all of it to be tuned with what decks you expect to face in mind.

So Package System is just having experience with a bunch of variations of what is basically the same deck, that are accomplishing different things, and knowing which one to use at a given time. Of course, you never actually know which one, but that's the point of testing them out. For instance, I had been playing around with a list in Explorer recently that topped out with a handful of Hostile Investigator, and I found myself boarding them out fairly often because they were too slow. So, I loaded up my version of the deck with no four drops and four copies of Cenote Scout and two Evolved Sleeper, which dramatically shifts the focus of the deck, or what I like to call the "gear" of the deck, and I fared much better.

5. We don't play bad cards, but it's okay to play different good cards.

There are times when there’s a card you want to play, but it needs the right cards around it to facilitate it. Okay, sure, so you add your maindeck Haywire Mite and your Pithing Needle to your deck to make your Urza’s Sagas work. Then you start looking at hands that have mediocre situational one mana artifacts in them, and wonder if it was worth it. If you can make the decision that all of those semi-dead draws are worth the payoff of playing Saga, then by all means, but I know I don’t have the stomach for that.

A different situation, though, is when you find cards that have synergy with specific things you already are okay with playing. For instance, you want to play Chevill. That’s great, because you’re already playing a bunch of removal spells. A smart idea might be to play creatures that can trigger a Chevill as well, like Bloodtithe Harvester and Bonecrusher Giant might be better choices than other potential choices for those slots. Similarly, you won’t want to play Vraska’s Contempt or Eat to Extinction over Bedevil, since the creature needs to hit the graveyard. The difference between Chevill and Urza’s Saga in these scenarios is that the cards you’re using to facilitate Chevill are cards you’re fine with drawing, even if you don’t draw Chevill himself. You’ll never say “my hand sucks, I drew Bloodtithe Harvester and Bonecrusher Giant” but you may find yourself saying “my hand sucks, I drew Pithing Needle and Shadowspear.” Again, this is a guideline that gets broken all the time, and often it’s well worth it, but I think it takes a lot more for me to be okay with that in a deck where you’re just playing normal Magic.

6. Versatility and Optionality

Abrupt Decay is a versatile card. It can hit creatures, enchantments, artifact, planeswalkers, battles, tokens, ward creatures you name it. That’s great, because there are a lot of different cards out there that people play, and you’re going to need to get rid of them.

Optionality is something different, where a card not only can do different things, it can be different things. A card with Kicker or a similar ability (lots of abilities are basically Kicker) can occupy multiple points in your mana curve. The reason that’s important is that you can’t usually dictate what the top of your deck is going to deliver. Sometimes you want a cheap card, sometimes you need a more powerful expensive card. Sometimes you are tight on mana, sometimes you have extra mana going to waste. We like Optionality because it allows you to circumvent some of the inherent randomness in the rules of the game. Cards that scale up in power when you add more mana let you avoid having the wrong half of your deck. It’s critical in this kind of a deck because we don’t have a nut draw that we are hoping to see anyways. One of the ways you can win with a less focused and linearly powerful deck is to be more consistent than the opponent.

That’s a lot of it, but not the whole thing. Okay, so let’s talk about Fireglass Mentor.

So here we have a card that makes you jump through some hoops, but essentially boils down to a 2/1 Ophidian for two mana. Cheap threats that apply pressure and generate real card advantage are some of the best things in Magic. Let’s go over how we can apply our guidelines to making this work.

For Guideline 1, I am pretty much going to be working under the assumption that it’s going to take many iterations before exactly figuring out the recipe to make this work within the rest of the deck. There’s a lot going on here, even though it’s a simple card, but since there’s only one deck to be concerned about, we’ve got plenty of time to bang our head against the wall figuring it out.

Guideline 2 dictates that we are playing a midrange deck, and Fireglass Mentor is an aggressively minded card, on its face. But really what I see from Fireglass Mentor is a tempo card. We use Thoughtseize to strip away removal spells for it, then use removal spells to clear the way. At that point, you are working with an Ophidian that is connecting until the opponent can figure out a way to stop it. Once they have, it’s often too late.

I don’t mind having an aggressive slant to a midrange deck, and I also think that I like this plan for Fireglass more than I’d like simply casting it with a bunch of aggressive creatures and burn spells, then hoping to hit more aggressive creatures and burn spells off its trigger. Instead, we get to choose from a variety of potential hits off its trigger, because we play a variety of different cards. Similarly, we are allowed to play the cards that complement Fireglass well, because there’s no real type of card that would be out of place.

Guideline 3 tells us that we can’t just play a deck that focuses solely on the Fireglass plan. There’s a ton of power packed into the disruption/Fireglass/clear blockers plan, but it’s still just a two mana creature, and so it’s as solid as you’d expect a two mana creature to be. The opponent could have, say, a protection from Black creature that puts a damper on us, or extra Portable Holes and Fatal Pushes, or some sort of 1/1 token generator. It wouldn’t be hard to do that in an opposing deck, so we might not want to plan on just crossing our fingers and hoping that the opponent doesn’t draw an answer. Instead, we want to have a variety of threats that work well in conjunction with the Fireglass plan but also when the Fireglass engine isn’t running. Bloodtithe and Bonecrusher are easy answers to this, but so might Chevill, Evolved Sleeper, etc. 

Guideline 4 just suggests that Fireglass is one of many ways to build the deck, and that’s worth remembering. Fireglass will clearly be at its best when we are the aggressor, and we can choose to play that way more often, but really we want to be able to get under the opponent more than the other way around. Fireglass isn’t going to be that good on defense. So in meta games where we might be on defense more often, there’s a little bit you can work with to make it so you are the lower-to-the-ground deck in more matchups, but you can also just shelve the Fireglass package and play something more naturally suited to what you’re facing. But, I will say that it can also be a mistake to too quickly assume you need to try a different package, just the same as it’s easy to assume you need to try a new entire deck. I’m confident we can make Fireglass work.

Guideline 5 wants us to figure out if we can maximize Fireglass while also keeping the quality of cards in the deck high. So first we want to know what we need to maximize it, and for Fireglass, it’s a actually a complex puzzle.

First we use Thoughtseize to clear their answers. Do we want Duress as well? Maybe, but Duress is a little weaker by itself, so I’m not sold yet. Then we want the Fireglasses, but of course we can only play four copies. Do we want something similar as a backup? Chevill is honestly kind of close, but not a lot of two drops so the same thing as Fireglass. Chevill is a maybe. Then we need removal to make sure that we can get in and get our triggers. I like Bonecrusher, since it can go upstairs and get the trigger in a board stall. Fatal Push obviously. Bloodchief’s Thirst and Strangle start to look good because, if all goes according to plan, we’ll be casting them in our first main phase anyways. If we can put in ways to incidentally case Fireglass to trigger, then we can still be getting our card advantage when in a board stall. Invasion of Azgol makes the opponent take 1, Mosswood Dreadknight has trample, Stomp can go the to dome, stuff like that is worth extra consideration. Then, we need to be able to play the cards we get off the trigger. That means they need to be cheap, so you can cast them, and be relevant on more board states. Bonecrusher and Mosswood are great since they are two mana cards when you need them to be but are big spells when you have the mana for them. Evolved Sleeper comes to mind as something you can hit for cheap and then pump mana into later when you have extra. There are like three new cards in Bloomburrow that are worth talking about for this effect as well, and I’ll talk about them later. Also, you can always just play a land, so we are going to want to set up the deck to not play a land precombat, and since that’s the case, we aren’t going to be slamming our biggest stuff and then clearing the way to attack. Cards like Vraska Golgari Queen and Chandra Torch of Defiance might not be what we are looking for.

All that said, there are certain good cards that we are going to want to skip on, but different good cards that will play in their place. None of this stuff is going to look bad in our opening hand or during a game where the Fireglass engine never is a factor, they’re all just solid cards you can use to win a game.

For Guideline 6, in a similar vein, cards that are more consistently applicable and cards with varying mana costs are going to be our best bets for hits off of Fireglass. If versatility and optionality are important for us, we’ll want a lot of it alongside Fireglass. Partly because they will let us hit usable cards more often when Fireglass triggers, and partly because Fireglass doesn’t itself lend very much in that regard.

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I’m very excited for Fireglass Mentor, not only because of how powerful it seems to be, but because it’s going to be a fun deck tuning puzzle to try and solve. Bloomburrow looks like a ton of fun so far, which is not something I’ve felt about a new set in a long time. I’ll try and get something into writing about the rest of the cards that are interesting to me before the set comes out. Thanks for reading.

Where The Angels Fear To Tread

Man, it has been a long time since I wrote last. This kid takes up a lot of time. I have some stuff to catch up on.

To start, this card's a banger obviously. You don't have to play with Fabled Passage or whatever to make it work, it's just really good. I don't think it's an auto-four-of in Explorer and Pioneer but I also don't think any of the other 2 mana removal spells are even close to this.

So this is the card in Lost Caverns that has me the most interested. Not necessarily interested because I think it's very good, interested because I want to find out how good it is, it's an interesting puzzle to solve. I was a huge Merfolk Branchwalker fan, and I don't think that Branchwalker is that far away from playable right now in Explorer and Pioneer. To have that card at a mana cheaper starts to look interesting. One-drops aren't usually something we're into with this style deck because they can't typically bake that much flexibility into a card that costs just one mana. But this is different. We are interested in all the things it's doing here. I would play a one mana 1/1 that draws a card, and I'd play an Isamaru that lets you surveil 1 on ETB.

The Scout dramatically downshifts the deck, which in certain metagames is great, and in others won't be. From what I've seen lately in Explorer, I'm more interested in being quick out of the gates than in playing a longer game, so it's been good. At the very least, it's a package to have in your pocket when you want to turn into a more aggressive version of the deck.

I also tested an up-shifted version of the deck with Appraiser and kinda liked it. But, WotC accidentally made it a broken card so we don't get to play it anymore.

Something I've touched on a few times is when you really want to go top rope after sideboard and go up to a six-mana value hammer, which card you should play. Chimil has been pretty cool, can't say for sure it's going to be a better card than Garruk Cursed Huntsman or whatever else. So far, I have enjoyed it. The Carnosaur is another option that's great if you're not doing Jegantha. What's great about it is the ability to just not be a six-drop when you want it to not be, yet still be a really good six-drop when you get that far. I just have a personal philosophical struggle with cutting Jegantha for a 2-of in the sideboard, but if you're already down that path then the Carnosaur is great. Again, it's just super low opportunity cost, since the Channel ability is going to be quite useful.

As far as these lands go, I haven't found a reason that either of the creature lands are better than Restless Cottage. The food token is a huge deal from the Cottage, so I'm sticking with that. I could see the Restless Vents being better if you are running into a lot of Narset or something similar, which is funny because it's triggered ability is so bad against Narset. As for the Hidden lands, they're not too far off. I've played a game where I was dead on board unless I hit something good off my Hidden Necropolis and did and came back to win, those games will happen. But, the creature lands in our colors are so good and so on-theme with a geared-down version of the deck, I can't really get behind this at the moment. I think the Hidden lands would be better in a higher-curve type of deck. Your hits would be better, you're less likely to be interested in the damage push of a Den of the Bugbear or whatever, your mana fixing might be better, and you might have more mana to activate the land anyways.

These are two cards that look great, but are just probably going to be on the bench along with every other cool and pushed three-drop that isn't Fable and Bonecrusher Giant. Sentinel is a phenomenal card, and I'd be playing four in every deck no matter what if I played Standard. Hey, who knows, maybe there will come a time when it's better than Fable for some reason, like they make a Magma Spray/Demystify Command. Huatli is more interesting. I think it's powerful, works well with itself in that it gives you extra mana and then something to do with the mana, but it's tough to build around a legendary creature like that, and by that I mean putting enough basics in the deck to make her work. Is it worth cutting your dual lands to play a 2-of legendary creature that's probably not any better than other three drops you could play instead? If you're playing, say, 4 basics total for some other reason already then she looks better, but like always, the three drop slot is very full. 

This is where I'm at right now after the new set. Can't really put my stamp of approval on it yet, but I like what's going on. I think the sideboard needs work.

A couple other things that are interesting happening around now is that Tarkir block is going to be on Arena soon, and that there's already new spoilers coming for the next set down the road. Here's my take on Tarkir.

I don't think that either of these cards are superstars, but they are both somewhat useful things we didn't have access to in Explorer in the past. Tasigur is a great threat. It's a delve card but it's actually at its best when the game goes late, so you can delve away all your stuff you don't want and then activate it the turn it enters play. You can get it into play sort of cheap, but it's not going to be turbo'd out quickly in this format. Murderous Cut has that same issue, where at its best it's a Doom Blade on turn three or later, but can't really do anything in the early game, where you may want as much removal as possible against the most aggressive decks. It's cheap, but it's not fast. I would caution against playing more than two or so delve cards in a list of 60 that doesn't involve purposefully filling the graveyard, and also staying away from them if you intend on playing Kroxa or Polukranos.

These three creatures are a few of my favorites from the before times, but they've probably been crept out of contention. For what it's worth, Warden of the First Tree still might have some juice. I'm still a big Evolved Sleeper fan, and Warden is similar. It's more of an anti-aggro version of the card and Evolved Sleeper is more of an anti-control card. If Red decks (or Smuggler's Copter, which is a whole thing) make your life total under pressure more, then Warden is a solid choice if you're looking for something in the one-drop slot.

This card is the real deal. It's an excellent anti-control card out of the sideboard, and not that bad of a main deck card either. I am excited to get to use this again. It'll probably be at least a 2-of in the sideboard in most Explorer decks I play, so long as the control decks in the format can't too easily deal with enchantments.

Real quick, just wanted to talk about this because I saw it and I like it. This might be the actual best six mana value hammer sideboard card once the Murder Mystery set comes out. It's a huge body, gives you value the turn you cast it (not ETB though!), and continues to provide value every turn. Untapping with it should be the game, and not untapping with it will be good enough a lot of the time. Very cool! Excited to try it.

~

In addition to this stuff, they also made an announcement that they're going to have a format called Timeless that's kind of like Historic but with lots of stuff unbanned, including the fetchlands when they come out in Tarkir block, and some of the super powerful stuff from the additional stuff they put into sets these days. It's like Arena Vintage. I'm basically not interested in it. Too many wildcards to spend and too many Arena-only cards that have a novel of text. Which is a shame, I miss the days of playing Deathrite Shaman and Fetchlands, but what can you do. That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Some Days The Sea Is Still As Glass

There are a couple more interesting things out of the new set I wanted to touch on. Both of them are exciting, but I'm not sold that the power level is going to be there.

What I love about Huntmaster of the Fells is, well, a lot, but one of the important things is how it puts the opponent in a tough situation no matter what they do. If they have the removal spell for it, then you got an extra 2/2 token and some life points back, which is enough to either keep applying pressure or pad your life total. If they don't, you get to get up to all kinds of shenanigans with flipping the Huntmaster back and forth. Redcap Gutter-Dweller sort of has the same recipe, where if they are able to remove the creature, you still get the two rats, and if they don't, you start gaining more real card advantage the next turn.

The difference between this and Huntmaster, though, is that Huntmaster is an excellent defensive creature, even when the opponent has a removal spell for the Huntmaster itself. You can't say the same for Gutter-Dweller, the rats just don't amount to anything of value when you're on the back foot. I still haven't found a good Huntmaster clone for Pioneer or Explorer outside of Esika's Chariot. And while Chariot is great, it can't help you do any destructive interaction, it can only add to the board. Gutter-Dweller's card drawing ability is a great way to help find cards you need in matchups where you need specific answers. I think I'd like this more if the rats could block and it was a 2/3 or a 3/2, or maybe even a 2/2, than as it's printed. But the potential is there.

So, I talk a lot in this blog about flexibility. Flexibility is key in this type of deck, because you want your cards to be able to play different roles at different times. A card like Abrupt Decay can take out a creature, or it can take out a planeswalker or enchantment, whatever. It's likely to be good at different applications. Creatures are always fairly flexible, they can attack, block, use abilities, etc. The other form of flexibility that I look for is flexibility in mana cost, and when you can get a card that can be cast at multiple different times on your curve, you're helping yourself out in the long run, so long as that card is strong enough.

The thing about Magic deckbuilding is that you're grappling with the inherent randomness in the rules of the game. The ideal situation is you play a land and cast the most powerful spell you can every turn. But, not only will you not always have the land, you also won't always have a spell that utilizes all that mana. In general, a two mana spell on turn two and a two mana spell on turn three is going to be worse than an opposing two drop on two and three drop on three. The ability for a single card to occupy multiple spots on your curve in your decklist is a huge bonus. When you're playing a deck like this, that's less about its own synergies and more about doing what's needed at a given time, variable mana costs help ensure that your own fail rate is a lot less than the opponent's.

I can't really say for sure that I think Virtue of Persistence is going to be that good, but I love what's going on here. First, we have an effect that is absolutely worth two mana. Sometimes, these cards give you two bad options, but Locthwain Scorn should be effective at taking out any two drop creature, and the fact that it's -3/-3 instead of damage is a big deal, too. Clearly, that's not going to be amazing in every matchup, but it'll be at least serviceable against a lot of the creatures in the format, including Bonecrusher, both Fable chapters, Bloodtithe Harvester, and all the cheap aggro red creatures. The life gain is important as well.

The Virtue itself is not a great card in a matchup where the removal spell doesn't do anything, but not because it isn't powerful. It will be hard to get this through counters, and you won't always have seven mana, of course, but it is a must-answer threat. It doesn't have to be super-economical. The most important reason you can't play huge haymaker cards is because they are too slow against the rest of the format, and will be at their best in the exact matchups where you can expect Locthwain Scorn to be a blank.

I think the most interesting place to play Virtue of Persistence is in the midrange mirrors, where the removal spell will be usable, and the inevitability that Virtue gives you can help in the ultra late game, which would be undecided. It's kind of the best of both worlds, a huge threat that can be used for something else when you don't have the mana, and also a huge threat that can help itself get cast by keeping you alive long enough. In fact, I think this is great against Rakdos specifically. Fable tokens and Bonecrusher Giants need to get removed before they start attacking you, but doing so puts you down cards. Virtue alleviates this in a big way.

It's totally possible that Virtue either isn't good enough as an Adventure, that it's not good enough as an enchantment, or that Jegantha is too important in the format. There are always plenty of ways that new cards can be not good enough. The rate's not that amazing, but the recipe is fantastic. I think it's got potential, and I'm excited to give it a try.

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That's it for this set. The cards I like the best are Mosswood Dreadknight, Restless Cottage, and Virtue of Persistence. I like a lot of the designs here. It's like they took the theme of Throne of Eldraine and then actually tested the cards. The set comes out in a couple weeks, and I'd love to get a stream in trying out some new stuff. Follow me on Twitter for updates on that if you're interested. Thanks for reading.

I'd Like To Find The Proper Potion

Spoiler season is over, now it's time for spoiler season. As always, haven't played as much Magic as I'd hoped as of late, but we've got some cool or at least interesting things to talk about with the new set. I don't have any current list that I like, or a real grasp on a metagame, especially since the recent Historic Anthology, so I'll be talking in more of a macro sense with regard to these cards.

Also, there are leaks here, so continue with caution. I'm sure it will all be public soon enough.

A Pioneer card that I sort of like and wish we had access to in Explorer is Hissing Quagmire. It's not that three mana for a 2/2 deathtouch is blowing anyone's doors off, it's that it uses a land slot and can potentially trade for a spell out of the opponent, especially if you're in a defensive role. It also has just enough juice to pressure planeswalkers and throw down a little damage. Plenty of cards are capable of this sort of thing, but few of them also help your mana situation. Restless Cottage is something like a more aggressive version of Hissing Quagmire, which isn't actually what we're looking for all the time, even though its rate is a little better than Quagmire. Still, a utility land that also fixes mana is excellent, the graveyard hate is a nice touch, and four toughness dodges a lot of removal which helps you not get blown out in combat. What's nice is that you don't actually cut your Den of the Bugbears and Hive of the Eye Tyrants for it, you can replace those with, say, Blackcleave Cliffs and cut Ziatora's Proving Grounds if you like. Or, if you're not as worried about having lands that enter tapped, cut some Deathcap Glades or whatever.

Magma Spray, or whatever the newer version of that is called, is a useful enough card that having that plus a bonus is something worth checking out. And the bonus is great. I think that fulfilling the Bargain on stuff like this is going to be easier than it might seem because of Fable and Bloodtithe Harvester. You don't need to contort the deck to use it, and you wouldn't want to, but it's going to be a possibility fairly often. I could imagine a metagame where a couple of these are maindeckable, but more likely it's a sideboard card that's good against both cheap creatures and recursive creatures. (It doesn't say it on the card, but Bargain says you can sacrifice a creature, artifact, or token when you cast the spell to get the bonus, basically Kicker)

I think a Saga for 2G that starts off by making a 3/3 token would have to be pretty useless in chapters 2 and 3 to not see play. And, well, yeah I think it's kind of useless. I think this is pretty bonkers in a deck with Llanowar Elves, since you can cash them in for real threats, plus you can add mana with the chapter 2 trigger on the stack. Sometimes green three drops are the type of card where they're amazing if they get accelerated out with an Elf and just okay otherwise, and this seems like one of those cards. A tough sell in a world where Fable is legal.

This looks great, but probably a little too slow. I think that in Explorer, we won't often have enough time to cast the Adventure, then cast the Quirion Dryad, then get the bonus, and if you're not doing that consistently, I can't really imagine the other modes being strong enough. That's just my gut feeling, and what's funny is that I think I'd be more excited about this card in any other set, but the next card looks better to me, and they occupy the same space.

This card seems extremely pushed to me. Like, they just tacked on trample for fun, and they printed a souped-up Magma Spray to keep it in check. I don't know if intentionally pushed is going to translate into being good, but it's worth noting. Unlike the Questing Druid, just throwing a 3/2 onto the battlefield on turn 2 is going to be a fine way to keep up tempo a lot of the time, and drawing a card is usually much more useful than Riveteers Charming a card. I think this would be viable without the recursion clause, but that's the part that puts it into overdrive. Instead of missing your chance to get value off of it by casting it early, you can rebuy it when it dies and give yourself an unkillable card drawing machine. It won't work all the time, of course, but we're talking pretty huge amounts of card advantage if you can draw two cards and trade off with another. All with the flexibility of just being Watchwolf when your hand needs it to be. This looks like it could be excellent.

This is like a weird Goblin Rabblemaster that also has incidental graveyard hate. Maybe all this incidental graveyard hate is for Mosswood Dreadknight? Anyways, I can't really picture this being any better than all the other three drops we have access to, but if the three drop slot wasn't so crowded it might be worth trying. There's a certain amount of value to a reasonable rate creature that gives you a piece of cardboard, no matter how useless it is, kind of like Bloodtithe Harvester or Fable chapter 1, so I don't think it's crazy to play this card, it just doesn't seem that powerful or versatile.

Basically an OG Polukranos except it gets smaller when it fights something. I'd rather play the newer Polukranos (not the newest Polukranos. Jeez I hate when they keep re-making the same characters.)

So I want to preface that there are a lot of barriers to playing a card like this. First, you have to want to play four drops, which isn't always the case. Then, you have to be convinced that it's better than Sheoldred and Chandra for your four drop slot, which is a hard sell for me but not impossible. Then, you have to be convinced that it's better than Vraska, Esika's Chariot, Polukranos, etc plus Jegantha, which is an even harder sell for me, but that can be the case sometimes as well. If we can get past that, then there's actually a lot going on here that's great. The problem with losing out on Jegantha is that we lose a big chunk of our late game power, but the adventure spell helps make up for that. In the end, I just don't think the Dragon straight up is going to be what we want in Explorer. It's a fast, heavy-handed kind of format that can be hard to keep up with. I think you want your four drops to be good late game draws because they're just really strong cards, not because you can put mana into them to make them even stronger, unlike with cards lower on the curve. The opposing mid-late plays are going to hit so hard that you don't really have this kind of time.

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That's it so far. If anything else looks cool I might write about it here. Thanks for reading.

Cool Clear Water Well You Can't Ever Tell

This has been winning a lot in Explorer for me.

Sometimes they ban a card in Standard and I think to myself, "should I have been playing that in other formats this whole time?" And sometimes the answer is yes, so while Bankbuster isn't the typical kind of card I like to play, it's just really strong. I was never really a Mazemind Tome guy, but Mazemind Tome never attacked for four. It works well with Azgol, too.

Azgol is awesome, but I think it's a little tough to build around. First, you have to build around, like, not building around it, by which I mean you might not draw it, and you might even board it out. Secondly, it's not like the payoff is huge, you can't really expect that a flipped Azgol instantly wins you the game. It does, though, sometimes, more than you might expect, but it's still just a creature. Third, like I said you might board it out, because there will be some matchups where it's not at its best. That's tough because we also run four Fatal Push, and now we're trying to board out 8 or so cards against control decks, which means we need 8 cards that come in against control decks. This is the best configuration I've been able to come up with where it feels like it's working the way it's supposed to.

I think that with things like Azgol, these little build-around packages are worthwhile to have in your back pocket, a concept I've been trying to solidify called Package Theory. I had a little thought I was trying to put together about Package Theory here, but basically, as long as Bankbuster, Den of the Bugbear, and Invasion of Azgol all remain solid in the metagame, I like playing them together, but those cards are kind of a package themselves, even though they are fine without each other in practice. For now, it seems to be the right amount of ability to flip the Invasion but not leaning into it too hard that compromise the rest of the deck.

I don't typically love Duress in these decks, but with the Bankbusters and Fables I think it works out. Usually I like haymakers over one-for-one stuff against control decks, but there's actually a lot of late-game value and card flow in the deck so Duress is fine there, which is good because it's usually better than Mind Rots (like Go Blank) against combo stuff. Eldest Reborn is just the biggest thing we can do with Jegantha for a five mana hammer, but I'm not married to it. Just give us Thragtusk, man.

No Liliana is to facilitate Jegantha, which I like a lot at the moment, and it seems to work well not exactly with Invasion of Azgol, but in the Invasion of Azgol deck. Kolaghan's Command over Riveteers Charm and other stuff is because I just think it's kind of a small ball format and K Command is great in that scenario. I don't really know how to explain that further.

I should probably talk about some stuff with the new set(s). Tranquil Frillback is a great catchall, not amazing but basically gives you a bigger sideboard, since you get your graveyard hate card and your life gain card and your disenchant card all in one. I don't think new Nissa does anything in Explorer because I'm not playing Fabled Passage unless I absolutely have to, but hey, maybe there's some Package Theory there with, like, Witherbloom Command or something.

As far as Lord of the Rings set, I think I like a couple of Bowmasters in Jund in Modern. Not because of the draw triggers, but just because it's an excellent way to get rid of some of the format's most annoying things, mostly Ragavan and Esper Sentinel. Great answer to those cards, plus mana dorks, looks totally awesome. Raise the Alarm plus Gut Shot already lines up really nicely against the format, so I think it's worth playing a couple, even if it's not as good as in Legacy where you just get a 4/4 and four damage in response to a Brainstorm. Not sure that there's very much else in the set for Jund, but I do think that the mono-white Samwise is getting super slept on for Modern, if that's your thing. Looks like a great add to a Wafo-Tapa style control deck (I know he's currently on Kaheera, but that style).

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Updates will continue to be sporadic, but Susie's getting older and I'm getting afforded a little more time here and there to play and write and stuff. Thanks for reading.

We Pay The Teller Off In Gold

Hey folks, had a couple of follow up thoughts from the previous post, plus some observations from the first couple of days of this set.

Invasion of Azgol is awesome. My first experience with it is casting it on turn three and my opponent immediately conceding. It's not going to be that good all the time, but for a two mana card, the amount of power it has is pretty incredible. High ceiling, high floor, doesn't take a ton of work to pull it off. I think that you should play four if you have an aggressive slanted Jund or Rakdos deck.

I'm not 100% sure how to build around it yet. I haven't been that impressed with Grim Flayer in Explorer, at least not as much as I have been in Pioneer. The short answer is that there are more Bonecrusher Giants in Explorer, the long answer is that Pioneer is a format where games are less about value battles and more about setting up engines, and in that case, Grim Flayer is great at finding the tool you need to break up an opposing engine, but not great at actually giving you value, and not great at not getting beat up value-wise by Bonecrusher. The idea was that a four-power creature is perfect for attacking the Invasion, and that's true. However, while the perfect four-power 2 drop may not exist, things like Bonecrusher itself has been excellent at flipping battles, as has Evolved Sleeper alongside any other creature on turn 2. I've been playing about 10 or 11 copies total of Scavenging Ooze, Canterbloom, and Bloodtithe Harvester. I am also wondering if there's a way to make Chevill work alongside Invasion, but that's a post for another time. Also, maybe Reckoner Bankbuster? Or Heart of Kiran?

Invasion of Ikoria has been sweet in Modern. It's not changing the world or anything, but having a big gigantic creature for four mana that completely dominates a board and closes the game quickly is a great ability to have, especially because the Invasion itself is a flexible card you can do other stuff with. I think the hatebear toolbox aspect of Invasion of Ikoria isn't really what I'd hoped it would be, because the best stuff in Modern doesn't usually get absolutely hosed by a single creature. That said, a couple singleton Dauthi Voidwalker and stuff like that in the board isn't the worst idea ever. What has been as good as I'd hoped, or maybe better, is Zilortha just dominating the game when it comes down. Plus, there's other flexibility outside of the hate bear aspect, like finding a Dryad Arbor, or a Ragavan, or just going after a Tarmogoyf if it looks like you can flip the battle.

Outside of that, nothing too much to report, other than that Deeproot Wayfinder has potential and is not a bust. I haven't had a chance to try it myself, but I have seen some lists online that have done well with it in Modern and Legacy. Now, there are also a couple of cards that I didn't mention in the previous post that I'd like to go over.

Sheoldred is likely to find a place as a sideboard slot in decks where you're looking for a good five mana card as a midrange hammer, but are trying to cover a wider range of decks. Glorybringer has its applications, as does Elder Gargaroth, Angrath, Lolth the Spider Queen, etc. I also like The Eldest Reborn, especially when I'm playing Jegantha. In non-Jegantha decks, I wouldn't be surprised if Sheoldred was just the best thing going in that slot. It has a certain amount of immediacy that we're looking for, like a Planeswalker or Glorybringer does, but also has the ability to take over a game if you untap with it like Gargaroth does. Eight cards in the graveyard isn't a gimme, but in the late game it should be fairly likely to happen, and 4/5 menace is a great stat line.

One of the problems I run into every time I try and tune this deck is that I have a hard time figuring out which three-drop cards I want to play. Liliana, Riveteers Charm, Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Kolaghan's Command, those are some of the best, but I also really miss playing stuff like Inscription of Ruin, Murderous Rider, Courser of Kruphix, and Briarbridge Tracker. Tons of options at that slot, and they all have their merits. What interests me about Nahiri's Warcrafting is that you can cast it on curve as a removal spell just fine, but it scales up nicely later in the game. So, in reality it's a four drop, in the same way that Courser is, except you can cast it early if you want to. Shoot your creature, find a land, make my land drop for free, that's a fine turn four. However, you also have the ability to wait until even later and start digging for action. On six mana, Warcrafting a creature and finding something like a Fable or even just some two-drop creature, now we are cooking. So you get all this flexibility baked into a card that's just sorcery-speed Hero's Downfall, plus you can pop off your own battle if you have nothing else going on. I think there's potential here, a low-risk/high-reward card that can smooth out the top end of the curve. I'm currently playing a Jegantha build, but if that changes, then I think this is worth a slot or two. Also, it was like 30 cents, so I spec bought 58 copies. I hope they're good!

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That's it for today. I think the thing I'm most excited about actually is the Invasion of Ikoria in Modern, that seems sweet. This point in the baby's life is not ideal for Magic content creation, but she'll be more independent soon. Thanks for reading.

Just Might Be Your Kind Of Zoo

March of the Machine spoilers are up, and there are a few cards to go over. Admittedly, since the baby was born I haven't had a ton of time to play. It feels like Brother's War just came out, and that was two sets ago now. But, this set has a lot of stuff that if not powerful, or that good, is at least intriguing. And wordy.

In Explorer, this excites me a lot as far as the battles go. The reason is that the front side is a solid enough card by itself. I don't think we would play Cruel Edict if given the chance, or Cruel Edict plus Planeswalkers. Jund in Explorer, though, is in the market for everything going on here. We want a removal spell, we want it to be versatile, we are okay with trading damage for a little card advantage, and we're into having a cheap creature that's small enough that you don't have to put a lot of resources into it but big enough that you can't exactly ignore it. Ashen Reaper is a real enough threat if it stays on the board long enough. The reason that this battle in particular seems good to me, in Explorer Jund, is that we might be on board for a free creature if we gift our opponent four life, we also might not be depending on the context of the game, and Invasion of Azgol lets you decide that for yourself. You've got the removal spell part of the card done, which is a perfectly fine outcome, you can try to get the full value if you want, or you might choose not to.

Battles seem like they are going to be hit or miss, since what the card does has a lot to do with how it's going to play out. I remember when Lorwyn came out and the debate about whether Planeswalkers were good or not, and it turns out that they are all contextual. Similarly to Planeswalkers, what makes them hard to evaluate is the amount of options they give you, not just the abilities written on the card, but the plays you make in-game to protect a planeswalker or to flip a battle.

You also want to have flipping battles in mind when you construct your deck, both for yourself and your opponent. In order to maximize Invasion of Azgol, or maybe to give ourselves the most options, creatures that can flip it by themselves turn into a priority. New Explorer addition Grim Flayer comes to mind, as does Voltaic Brawler, Bonecrusher Giant, Migloz, Sheoldred, stuff like that. Also stuff like Kolaghan's Command and Stomp can finish off an Invasion of Azgol that a Kiki Jiki token or an early Evolved Sleeper got a hit on. A huge Package Theory situation. Also, we want to keep the board clear to avoid our opponents being able to cast a battle and flip it on us, so cheap removal and being up-tempo might be critical in the coming format, if more battles become popular.

Finally, what's nice about Invasion of Azgol, and why not only do I like it but I like it as a four-of, is that it works so well with itself. Invasion's trigger can remove a blocker, allowing you to get in and flip the battle. Ashen Reaper is a creature that itself can quickly get up to four power and has evasion, so it's excellent at flipping future drawn copies of Invasion of Azgol. I think initially I'm going to play four copies of this to try it out.

Similarly to that last thought on Invasion of Azgol, Kyren Flamewright looks like it's really good at flipping battles as well, if we're going to go down that road. It also is a nice synergy piece with Grim Flayer, in that it helps get delirium both by being another card type and by filling the yard, so there might be something there. If you want to just be The Battle Deck, this card is probably in there.

Out of the battles, this is the only other one that looks appealing to me in Explorer Jund. It's definitely more of a setup-payoff kind of card than Invasion of Azgol, becuase four mana Murder is just not good enough. Also, the difference between needing five damage and four is huge, especially if you're planning on having four-power creatures to flip your other battles. The flipped card is just a monster, though. It's like Esika's Chariot plus a mana sink plus a removal spell and incidental graveyard hate. I'm not sure how consistently this can go off, but if it's consistent at all, it seems like a powerful top end for Explorer.

I don't have super duper high hopes for Deeproot Wayfiner, and a lot of that is because it probably doesn't go in the Invasion of Azgol deck, but this thing is solid, especially in a deck that incidentally puts lands into the bin. And by solid, like, I mean, one hit with this on turn three is going to be winning games fairly often, not immediately but down the road. And while it's not especially good at flipping battles, it does trigger even if you're attacking one, and is a cheap creature that wants to be played alongside cheap removal, just like battles would like you to do. Not sure it will make any decklist in Explorer, but I'm eager to try it, if only because I think it's been criticized quite a bit by some notable people. Or maybe those people are right and I just can't get over my disbelief that a card this pushed isn't good. Either way, worth a shot.

I don't think this is good enough for Explorer, but what's worth focusing on isn't the abilities, necessarily, it's the numbers. This card has (pretty much) the same play pattern as Jace, Architect of Thought. Four loyalty, +1 to play some defense, -2 to gain some value. You start by using the -2, if it survives until your next turn, you +1 and spend your turn setting up to defend it, then you -2 again the next turn for more value, rinse and repeat one time and you've drawn three cards and played some defense and fixed your mana. A planeswalker that has +1 defend itself and -2 gain a semi-large piece of value turns out to work nicely. I'm just not sure that a card like this that doesn't put anything tangible on the board the turn it enters play is good enough to see play. Three mana, four loyalty, +1, -2, those are the things I like about this card, the actual ability effects are just probably not going to be useful enough.

A pretty good removal spell. Compare to something like Vraska's Contempt and Eat to Extinction, and it's a little bit worse at face value because of "destroy" vs "exile", but okay. This will probably work nicely if you're expecting to be blocking, where you can use the convoke after blockers and before damage on their biggest unblocked creature. Surveil 2 is no joke. It looks great if you can depend on having creatures in play to convoke it, Explorer Jund kind of can't.

Every once in a while I try and go way up the mana curve for a sideboard midrange hammer card. Usually that means something like Casualties of War or Chandra, Awakened Inferno. In Jegantha decks it's usually Garruk, Cursed Huntsman. Kogla and Yidaro could take that spot in a non-Jegantha deck. 7/7 Nekrataal is pretty nice, as is just trample and haste to either go face or hit a planeswalker (or battle). But the backup ability of being an uncounterable Slice in Twain is really nice too. Lots of the decks you'll want to bring this in for will have incidental stuff it can hit, like Fable of course, but also Portable Hole, Leyline Binding, stuff like that, not to mention the Enigmatic Incarnation deck. I've actually like Jegantha lately, and six mana hammers aren't always the thing to be doing, but it could be worth a shot in specific instances. I don't think it's the most powerful card for that slot, but it might be the one that gives you the most options while still being very powerful.

So you've probably heard that the trick with Invasion of Ikoria is that in Modern (or Legacy I guess), you can cast it for 2 and go fetch Vampire Hexmage and get a Thorn Elemental. Seems cool, but is four mana Thorn Elemental really that good? Well, yeah it kind of is. Murktide Regent isn't that powerful of a card compared to Ulamog and Primeval Titan and Ad Nauseam and whatever, but the reason it's good is that it goes in a deck that is just playing a normal game until you cast it. This combo is the same way, you can just cast Thoughtseizes and Fatal Pushes and Tarmogoyfs and then when you hit four mana, you get Thorn Elemental. Also, note how it makes all your creatures Thorn Elemental too, so it busts through a board stall if you have a couple of Goyfs in play holding down the fort.

What makes it most exciting to me is that plan A of flipping the battle is solid enough, but you've got a ton of cool plays you can make with the Invasion to fetch up silver bullets, and in Modern that's a big deal. Finale of Devastation doesn't make your Jund deck in Modern just to fetch Collector Ouphe, but if you could just cast it for X=2 and get 8/8 reach unblockable, it probably would. Even just fetching a Tarmogoyf and having the battle later to flip can work out. A singleton Dryad Arbor can turn a double Invasion hand into a turn three Zilortha fairly easily, and there are plenty of awesome hate piece creatures you can put singles of in your board and have five copies when the time is right. Maybe play one Godless Shrine and then stuff like Gaddock Teeg, Leonin Arbiter, whatever else you might want. Plus if you draw the Hexmage, it's not like it's that bad of a card. I think it's the closest thing Jund is going to get to Natural Order in Modern, which is to say, the ability to do something a little beyond fair Magic, something that's maybe not on-theme but isn't specifically off-theme and adds an extra element to the deck.

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So there's that. My two cards I'm most excited about are Invasion of Azgol in Explorer and Invasion of Ikoria in Modern. I'm finding that it's not that feasible to climb the ladder with a two month old in the house, since it's hard to have a win rate that can overcome having to close the program and go put out a fire or whatever every few games. But I'll get some games in and come back with a list at some point for Explorer, and maybe the same in Modern. Thanks for reading.