It's the Magic: Phyrexian Jalapeno Paupers Pt II

Last week: Stuff.
This week: The rest of the stuff.


Gremlin Mine reminds me of the guy who has a truck and would—if called upon—provide emotional support in an hour of need. However, I don’t need his truck because I have a Blazer, and as far as emotional support, I have a Blazer! Gremlin Mine does one of two things, neither of which will ever do me much good. I still use it, just like I still hang with people in the absence of material and emotional gain, but it's not too common.

It's the Magic: Phyrexian Jalapeno Paupers

For the past three months, I’ve been collecting Scars of Mirrodin cards without having the time to do more than draft them. They’ve been sitting in their little Scars of Mirrodin ghetto while I get the time to properly integrate them into the rest of my decks or consign them to the purgatory that is my boxes of unused cards.

I finally, had the chance to do so, creating a number of decks heavily based on themes that Scars of Mirrodin introduced (Metalcraft, Infect, Proliferate, Infect, Sacrifice, Infect). As I flipped through my piles of SoM commons time after time in search of more Pristine Talismans, Grim Afflictions, and Remember the Fallens, I passed other commons and dismissed them with little thought.

It's the Magic: New Phyrexia

New Hotness
Caress of Phyrexia as a super Sign in Blood is fun, and while I've only cast Mindculling once, it came late enough it swung things big-time.  A lot of cards seem to have two things going on, which gives them a lot of versatility, like Vapor Snag. I dismissed it at first because I was only thinking of it offensively, "all upside." After playing with it, it's obvious that you occasionally want to save your own shit this way and if you do that, you have a tougher decision than you would with Unsummon. Oh well, if you make the wrong choice, someone else will take your place. That's Phyrexia for you.

 “Alex, I’ll take ‘Cards I never thought I’d cast on myself until I did’ for 3BB”

It's the Magic: Top Ten Picks from New Phyrexia (not really including the ones last week).

New Hotness

I like charge counters. I probably shouldn’t, but I really do. This set seems to play with them quite a bit and I like that. It’s one of the reasons I like proliferate so much. Granted, I like working The Battlefield, and to a lesser extent, The Stack. Hands, graveyards, libraries, and command zones? Not so much.

Nice idea. Not evocative, but a cool new thing. Evroken.

It's the Magic: New Phyrexia Previews, Part 1

With New Phyrexia coming out in two weeks and me still not sure if I'm going to preorder it, I thought I'd take this opportunity to review some of the cards coming out for it, to work out my problems via discussion. The cards below are rated on a simple system:

Love: Hedron Crab. Lorescale Coatl

Like: Jace's Erasure, Runeclaw Bears, Flensermite

Not Bad: Forest, Giant Spider, Ponder

Do Not Like: Jace the Mindsculptor, Watchwolf, Praetor's Council

I don't like the big, over cost Blue dudes. I know, I know, it's Blue's weak point. I don't contest it, but I've never really liked it. At least Chained Throatseeker is a wall. Albeit a wall for six mana, but isn't a wall and it does have infect. I don't know how many really big infect creatures there are, but my impression is that there aren't a lot in common. So if you need an infecting fattie to finish your beat down, for one blue mana there's Chained Throatseeker. Not bad. No Flensermite, but not bad.

Dispatch is the second card to get me excited about Metalcraft (the first being Concussive Bolt, which I can list other complaints for, but...). I like it because it's a "Do something, or do something better" type of card. The art doesn't hurt and I won't oppose exiling or the shenannagans that go with Metalcraft, so I Like it. I don't think I'll mind playing against it too much either; what are you going to do, exile my Flensermite? We both lose in that scenario.

It's the Magic: Besiegement

New Hotness
Although Mirrodin Beseiged came out two weeks ago, it's not quite old news yet. I just played my first draft with it this week (A Scars-Scars-Beseiged draft with three friends who hadn't been keeping up with the spoilers and previews), and I learned a few things:

Infect is still potent. I don't mean that in that it's a strong offensive tool. It is (I was consistently threatening two of the other three players on the board with my Infect/Proliferate deck), but what I mean by that is that there are certain cards which radically change the way the game is played; bombs. Bombs demand an answer and quickly, pushing players into a strong attack (in this context meaning a counter spell or removal) or into a hunkering defense while they try to draw an answer. Once a player hits seven poison (give or take) anything with infect is, essentially, a bomb. That makes a forty-card deck of three-drop infect rats and proliferate something that demands more than a few answers; it demands you simply kill the source. That's why I died first. Okay, indiscriminate poison counter allocation is why I died first, but the underlying cause is the same; poison changes a game significantly.

It's the Magic: Phyresis (Improved!)

But if…then…hm
Elspeth’s plane was overrun by The Phyrexians. My understanding was that she wasn't from Dominaria or Phyrexia. Doesn’t that imply that Phyrexia was a threat to more than Dominaria? Was this covered during the original Phyrexian storyline? I mean, if you have two worlds (Phyrexia and Dominaria) infected by Phyrexia, and an ensuing fight in which both worlds are purged, then you figure the Phyrexian problem is ‘solved.’ Forever.

Let me go back a few steps; the first big storyline that Magic: the Gathering ever did was The Weatherlight Saga. It covered the intrepid crew (because crews are always intrepid) of the airship Weatherlight, which consisted of Gerrard, the human protagonist natural leader reluctant hero chosen one, Karn, the pacifist iron golem, and some other dudes/catladies. The Weatherlight sailed from their home plane of Dominaria (setting of most of Magic's early stories) to a few other planes (accidentally, if I'm not mistaken, adding "Jerry O'Connel" to Gerrard's description) and stumbled upon a plot by a plane called Phyrexia to invade Dominaria.

It's the Magic: Compleation

New Hotness
Mirrodin Besieged comes out tomorrow, which has to be the case since I just got back on shift. I am really excited about a lot of things. I know most of the preview cards of note are ridiculous Rare and Mythics that I won’t be getting a lot of and I know that I said if I didn’t buy any Magic between the release of Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia that I would (finances permitting) buy the best Star Trek ever made on DVD, plus seasons one and two of DS9, so I’ll actually be getting even fewer of the cards that I like than usual.

That said, I’m still kinda stoked about some of the cards.

Decimator Web: It moves your opponent one-tenth of the way towards defeat. Yeah, it’s expensive and it’s just an artifact that’s going to get removed once you drop eight mana or so into it, but I really, really, really like it because it has this meta quality to it. It says ‘opponent loses’ in a way that isn’t as blatant as Door to Nothingness or Darksteel Reactor. Even if your opponent manages to gain life, restock cards, or play Leeches, they can’t really do all three. It's an inefficient, deliberate method of killing someone with an easy and obvious answer. Its flavor text should be, “…No Mr. Beleren, I expect you to die.”