It's the...ah crap I forget

It's the...mumu?

It's the...momo?

It's the...mudkips?

I got it, It's the Magic!

A Layperson's History of Getting {U} from a Stone, Part 4, Part II of II

For the past few weeks, I've been idly speaking about artifacts (and lands) in Magic's history that give mana of any color. Some of those colorless cards give you mana, but attach a high cost to each of their uses. Some are more forgiving. In this final installment, I get to talk about some of my favorites.

Forbidden Orchard straight-up gives an opponent a 1/1 creature. A creature with a strong tribal type no less. Is one mana worth giving your opponent another body? As someone who's died to a 1/2 Hunted Ghoul, I have my doubts. Those who've never suffered that fate may disagree.

A Layperson's History of Getting {U} from a Stone, Part 1

So, last week I talked about an artifact that let other artifacts made colored mana, on the condition that they had that color. There are over 100 artifacts that are colored (most of them White, Blue, and Black because colored artifacts were released as the mechanic for the white, blue, and black faction in Alara), so it's a workable niche.

I often research my designs so I can understand templating and power levels. I ended up looking at the interesting methods that lands and artifacts have used to give players mana throughout the history of Magic.

Hated as they are, these cards have seen more nerdboners than anything should ever have to.

The grandaddy of them wall was the Black Lotus. The Moxes were up there too. The theory behind the lotus, based on conjecture, is that it's only one-use, so it's not that bad. However, dropping a four-mana anything on turn one is a really big benefit. It might be a card advantage issue, where you're effectively discarding a card for three mana (even Dark Ritual makes you pay B for that), but it's still a bargain. I can't even begin to defend the moxes, which are basically lands you can play all at once that hate Nevinyrral's Disk and Shatter.

It's the Magic: Hungry Eyes

So, last weekend, Jay Treat over at Goblin Artisans put up this Weekend Art Challenge. It was based around an image by keepwalking07. In case you can't/won't click over to see the image yourself, it's a massive silhouetted mecha standing amidst a ruined landscape.

Jay's challenge was to create a common or uncommon colored artifact based on that image. Bonus points were offered for a card whose color and status as an artifact were made more relevant by its rules text.

My first thought was to create a piece of equipment because it seems every submission I make to Goblin Artisans has the desperate, sweaty need to be recognized as a unique snowflake. Despite the fact that it came from TMI, the first set from the Deep-Seated Personal Issues block, I was relatively happy with the result:

It's the Magic: Creep

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, Slivers are a type of creature in Magic who share abilities. Few Slivers don't have abilities. Usually, if you have two slivers on the board, they each have two abilities; one from themselves and one from the other sliver. Add a third sliver and you have three abilities. What kind of abilites? All of them.

Slivers come in all colors, so Flying, Haste, First Strike, Lifelink, Regeneration, Flash, Trample, Shroud, Vigilance, Haste, Double Strike, Protection, Deathtouch, are where they start.

They can be uncounterable, they can work around protection, they can just fuck over permanents,  they can generate mana, deal direct damage, enters-the-battlefield removal, need more slivers? No problem. Card draw? Slivers have it. Sliver-hosing? Yes.

They have keywords that literally haven't been printed yet.

Slivers are crazy.

And in in July, Slivers are back.

It's the Magic: Quinton Hoover

This weekend, popular discontent over the latest spoiler from Dragon's Maze was eclipsed by the news that Quinton Hoover, fantasy artist responsible for some of Magic's most memorable art, passed away at the age of 49.

I'll cop to being aware of only a few Magic artists, so I didn't know Hoover by name before Friday afternoon. It didn't take too long for sites like Art of M:TG and a quick look around The Gatherer to realize I've known his work since before I played Magic.

Not all of the early art was representative of what the card did *cough* Stasis *cough* and I never really got how Green Arrow's interpretive dance performance exemplified regeneration. It's because I posses the paired faults of being too lazy to examine art and too much a philistine to even properly appreciate it.

You know this one. There are newer Wraths of Gods, in name and form alike, but if it's not an angry, glowing face looking down on opposing armies as they slowly die, it's just not the same.

Dragon's Maze Spoilers

[EDIT] Crap. Folks are Googling their way here for Dragon's Maze spoilers, an outcome I should have predicted when I put up a post labeled "Dragon's Maze spoilers" a week before actual Dragon's Maze spoilers came out, but didn't.

Hey, welcome. The blog is a grab-bag o' things, but the other Magic stuff is here. 

As some of you might know, the next magic set is called Dragon's Maze. In it, Niv-Mizzet finds a way to settle the conflict between Ravnica's 10 guilds with the creation/discovery of a maze across the city. The guild whose champion is the first to make it through the maze will (ostensibly) be the one to rule over Ravnica.

The images of the champions have been released, but their stats have not. I've compiled a list of those characters and their cards and estimated their abilities based on my knowledge of Ravnica, the mechanics introduced in Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash, and my limited understanding of Magic's current design philosophies.

It's a good ability that works well with bloodthirst, even if the draw/discard thing is more red than green.

It's the Magic: Goatnapper

Huh, That's Funny
Goatnapper.

Click through image for best card ruling ever.

Consider it for a moment.

...

It's terrible, right?

It does two things: exists as a 2/2 creature and steals a goat.

For a 2/2 red creature, Goatnapper is more expensive than you'd want. For those of you who don't play competitively, a creature's size is irrelevant if it's not cost-effective.

It's the Magic: Trackerbymoonlight

Hi guys I'm Tracker by Moonlight. After being given the option many times, I've decided to take VanVelding up on his offer to let me have a post in his blog. Largely this is due to the fact that I find it lacking balance in a certain Magic: the Gathering related area.

It's Magic: What is your favorite color? Black! No...Green! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Black
Black is the best color in magic because it’s fun. Anyone who's spent time gambling will tell you that the roll of the dice or the drop of a single card can make your day, and black frequently makes you go all-in with every single gamble.

Many of the spells in black mess with you just as they cut your opponent to shreds, making each one you drop a hazard that could cost you the farm. Some of these pan out

It's the Magic: Afterimage

Shiny!

Ever since last week, I've been excited about combining Glitterfang with Burning Inquiry. 

As my two favorite one-drops for red mana, I'm eager to make a card that does a bit of both. Not literally both of course, but a bit of each.

It has a scaled-back version of Burning Inquiry--in that everyone has to draw a card, then discard one at random--but with the swing of making Glitterfangs for each card specifically discarded this way.

It's the Magic: Blue/Red is the Best Color

This Week's Best Thing Ever

Blue/Red is the best color in Magic. Blue is the naquadah of the color pie--the term that describes the philosophy behind allocating abilities to each of the game's five colors--in that it goes with just about anything. It initially seems obvious that in a game where power comes from cards the color that draws more cards might be a bit complimentary, but Blue is more than card draw.

It's that of course, but much more.

You get more spells with cards like Hivemind. You can figuratively steal creatures with cards like Clone. You can literally steal artifacts and enchantments. That is, when your own cards can just drop stupid creatures with artifact synergy.  

Seven of the top twenty-four community-rated cards in Modern are artifacts. Considering that eight of those are lands---

Chart!

It's the Magic: White is the Strongest

White is the strongest color in Magic not because it can deny like blue, remove like black, or swing in like red, but because when it does any of those things, it doesn't do such things with the facetiousness of a wizard copying a spell they learned, summoning a force, or clawing at an enemy, but with the absolute rules of reality-slamming down on an opponent to remind them that they no longer exist. White purifies the battlefield of your opponent's with absolute righteousness. That's why it's Magic's strongest color.

No creatures. Wrath of God is more than just letting opponents overplay their hands while keeping resources in reserve; it's the ability to destroy every creature that exists before Mirrodin. There simply aren't creature problems when a player lays out the wrath of the almighty. In the old days of Magic, Wrath was absolute because white is absolute.

Today, white has armies of tokens and other small, low-quality creatures, but thankfully it retains the ability to obliterate everything on the board. A win with clumsy, otherwise useless creatures climbing over the corpses of enemies with better assets may not be a proud victory, but it is a victory. 

It's the Magic: Dervishes

Yeah, yeah. I've played Gatecrash and it's pretty cool, but both of my Orzhov decks are awful, so fuck it; today I'm talking about custom card creation. Specifically a concept that I'm deeply in love with:

The idea with Twin-Knife Dervish (TKD) is that it can split up the damage dealt by a group of blocking creatures by giving them first strike. Then, it can simply shrug off that damage if the total isn't enough to kill it. Essentially, it uses first strike and double strike to fight two different battles, like a master swordsman cutting through waves of enemies.

It's the Magic: 10 Something Return to Izzetplane

Jesus fuck guys, I'm not sure I can do this. I don't have enough--fuck

As I was saying, I don't have enough money to buy Return to The Plane That Gave Us Izzet, which is for the best because the set spoiler isn't really exciting me. I don't have enough money to continue drinking Diet Coke either. I could continue with my Coke and coffee on hand, but I'd run out of supplies around mid-week and have a caffeine crash during work. Just to recap; this is my last "It's the Magic" for a while because I'm just not interested, it's last minute on Sunday, my brain is trying to explode, Blogger's doing that thing where it gives me the trollface and assures me the formatting is right for everything, I've had a massive glass of delightful buzz red, and I'm working with cards like this:
 

I guess...merfolk would ride this. Oh wait.

It's the Magic: Well-Adjusted Scientist

I make a lot of cards, and I try not to publish too many of them because I find other people's custom cards boring or stupid. Anyway, while I wait for more feedback on my other string of It's the Magic articles, I'm putting up some of the more conceptual and fun cards I've made.

Man, despite the fact that it is undeniably a generic sitcom, How I Met Your Mother does have some high points. Anyway, I like Uiel as the one that survives, a creature that dodges the "X all creatures" effects. He strangely dies to Divine Reckoning which targets a specific group of creatures. I'll be honest though; I'm not sure if he's unaffected by Hour of Reckoning, which affects "all nontoken creatures," Aboshan, which affects "all creatures without flying," Akroma's Vengeance, which affects all creatures, but also affects artifacts and enchantments, Awakening, which is like Akroma's Vengeance, but specifically says "all creatures" before mentioning lands, or Apocalypse, which affects all permanents, which include creatures. I'm guessing "no," "yes," "yes," "yes," and "yes."

It's the Magic: Red and Green Make Poo

In order to best use my Magic resources, I'm trying to take the two dozen standard decks I have and narrow them down to fifteen decks with an even distribution of colors and color combinations (White, White/Blue, White/Black, White/Red, etc.). 

However, I'm rubbish at Red and Red/Green decks, so three weeks ago, I thought I'd publicly work on the Red and Red/Green decks so that readers, friends, and random passers-by could offer input on the deck creation process. My rules for the decks are in that post.

Three weeks ago, I made a short-list of cards I had that I wanted to build a deck around. This week, I'm going to outline some cards that have been cut and the threats that my decks will need to address.

Skid Row

It's the Magic: Is it Monday Already

Whoops. I was working on this for a video, but Monday definitely snuck up on me this week. Enjoy. It's long and full of irony.

This place is packed and there are like, two seats free. One's by a bunch of kids and I'm like, "fuck that." So I go over to the other table and I ask that guy if he wants to play and he says, "No. I can't, I'm just sleeving this guy's cards." And sure e-fucking –nough he's just sleeving this other guy's deck, and all I can think of is "who does that?" "Ah, geez guys sometimes Monday's blue, or ahm, maybe Tuesday and Wednesday are grey,  and I don't give a shit about Thursday, but come Friday, my fin de semana comienzos with going to motherfucking Dragon's Lair to sleeve someone else's deck, something that anyone could have done at any point during the previous week and does not require that I leave his house.  Because I am a people person!"

So I sit at the kid's table and I play this guy with Strategema—

/Which one is that?/

White blue deck with Venser and Karn. It's built to stay alive until it restarts the game and then stay alive until I restarts the game and then stay alive...

/I get it/

So, I go up to a guy and we play. I asked his name twice. I forgot twice. I could not bring myself to care. His name was Kevin, or Kyle, or K-Pax. Some shit. We're playing and at one point, he's got two indestructible oozes and a pair of two-one deathtouch, flash asps in play and I play Divine Reckoning. Everyone chooses a dude they control and the rest die. I didn't have any dudes, so I considered myself ahead of the curve. He chooses—he fucking chooses so help me god, Terry—an indestructible ooze. I had to stop him. I had to say, "No. Stop it. I thought we could handle this quietly and with a bit of dignity, but I'm paying 2 and two white to kill a single asp. You choose the other one. You oozes will be fine. I'm just casting a fat, slow doom blade here." So he's a nice guy and he's sitting on front of me I squeak out a victory at 2 life from under two [Predator Oozes] and the spell with flashback that lets him get all his dudes in his graveyard back into his hand.

It's the Magic: Sundown for Strategema

So, when October fifth rolls around, Return to Ravnica will come out. When it does, Karn, Venser, and the rest of Scars of Mirrodin block (and M12) will rotate out of the standard format. This means that I'll have to replace my Strategema deck (an event which Terry describes as "Karning Karn").

Actually, in order to best use the resources at my disposal, I'm trying to take the two dozen standard decks I have and narrow them down to fifteen decks with an even distribution of colors and color combinations (White, White/Blue, White/Black, White/Red, etc.)

However, I'm rubbish at Red and Red/Green decks, so I thought I'd publicly work on the decks so that readers, friends, and random passers-by could offer input on the deck creation process. My rules for the decks are as follows:

1) I'm primarily using cards from Innistrad and M13. I'm not against using cards from the soon-to-be rotated Scars of Mirrodin and M12, but I'd like to have some roughly equivalent replacements marked for when October comes.

2) Splashing colors is fine. Green has a renewed interest in handling non-Green mana, so I won't rule that out.

3) In order to decide which decks get which cards, I'm using five tiers to prioritize which decks get cards of a particular color when they both need it. For example, my White/Blue, Black/Red, and Mono-Green decks get first pull at the colors of their type. The Mono-Red and Red/Green decks are way down at the bottom of their colors and get last pull at their colors. These decks won't be competitive, but... No. They just won't be competitive.

4) I only use cards I've pulled. I have a sufficient collection of Innistrad and M13 and buying specific cards isn't economically feasible right now, so the decks will largely be based on the cards I currently have at my disposal.

In fact, choosing which of the cards at my disposal should be used as the foundations of these decks is the first step of this process. Listed below are my selected cards and reasons for choosing them. If you have another card that might make a basis for a good deck, go ahead and let me know.

It's The Magic: The Great Dominarian Planeswalker Showdown

I'm not in a financial position to sample the newly-released M13, I haven't gotten out to play FNM, and I'm not gettin' any play at home, so there hasn't been much to explore on the Magic front. However, while reviewing the new set's planeswalkers (now, with the fortifying power of Bolas!) I thought about which planeswalker would win in a fight.

Then I thought, "Bolas always wins a duel." Because I owned and played with Bolas versus Ajani. Then I realized that most Jaces are useless in a standup fight. In the end, I decided that a tournament of four-way free-for-all games, played with standard decks constructed exclusively from commons would be the way to go. The twist: Each deck's planeswalker begins in play and when its planeswalker leaves play, it loses.

There were eight first-round games and the winners were forwarded to the finals. The finals consisted of two rounds of four-player games, with the top two planeswalkers advancing to the championship round.

It's the Magic: Legend--Challenge Accepted--ary

Goblin Artisans has put up a new design challenge; redesign one of the legendary multicolored creatures from the highly questionable Legends set.

Highly questionable.

The challenge stipulates that the name, art, and flavor text, but all other attributes can be changed. You can read the full details on their site here. 

Overview

My choice is a personal favorite: Sivitri Scarzam.

In the lore of Magic, Sivitri tamed dragons and terrorized a corner of Dominaria before being defeated. It's a short bit of history, but it's worth more than a 6/4 vanilla creature for 7 mana. Don't get me wrong; even in that price range, very few black and blue creatures can boast that kind of power. Those who can are often mythic rares.