With only 80 cards from Scars of Mirrodin officially spoiled, and with ¼ of those being basic land, it’s probably too early to start designing decks for after rotation. Well frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. States is just one week after rotation, so it’s never too early to start designing decks and testing them out to see what improvements they need. If the improvements they need are in the remaining spoiled cards, that’s fantastic! If not, either find them in the existing cards or go back to the drawing board.
So the basis of this deck is the fact that Venser is ridiculous. There was a lot of uncertainty when Jace, the Mindsculptor was spoiled, but I read it and immediately said “Oh, it’s the best planeswalker they’ve printed.” Well I had a similar reaction to reading Venser, although admittedly I only declared it the second best planeswalker. I know this card is going to be amazing, and I want to be one of the first to top 8 or even win an event using this guy. I only spent about 5 minutes designing this last night at like 3 am, but this is the deck I started with. The quality of the deck is reflecting in that, but there’s still something to all of this:

4x Halimar Depths
4x Celestial Colonnade
4x Mystifying Maze
6x Plains
6x Islands

3x Venser, the Sojourner
4x Jace, the Mindsculptor

4x Day of Judgment
4x Mana Leak

4x Brittle Effigy
4x Everflowing Chalice
1x Mox Opal

4x Aether Adept
4x Thrummingbird
4x Trinket Mage

I playtested this a little today against Mythic Conscription, and the deck definitely has some flaws. For starters, it’s really inconsistent. I never seem to draw any of my creatures, and if I do I don’t draw Venser. Mox Opal was a cute idea, but it’s not active oftened enough, not relevant often enough, and frequently gets shut off when I activate a Brittle Effigy. Thrummingbird is interesting and works great with a Chalice out, but I never had a planeswalker or more than one chalice out while a Thrummingbird was out.
I will say, however, that Brittle Effigy and Mystifying Maze were absolute champs in the games I played. I’d frequently be drawing land after land because I have NO card draw and almost no library manipulation, but the mazes, effigies, and colonnades made sure I stayed alive. All is Dust seemed like it would be good, and I think I may focus more on a Trinket Mage toolbox style control deck.

In short, yeah, the deck needs an assload of work. There were far more cards I wanted to run than there was room for. That said, I encourage people to start preparing and thinking about the new standard. You’re not going to win states with a Zen block deck, and there won’t be time for any proven netdecks to exist before you show up, so it’s all on your shoulders. I also encourage anyone who likes this style of deck to make comments and suggestions, and to post your own lists and any testing results you have.

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If you read a lot of Magic articles, then by now you should know that you’re a terrible player. You should also know that the people who write these articles are all terrible players, and that there is nothing anyone can possibly do to become a better player. If that sounds like a ridiculous statement, then perhaps it’s time to stop reading all those worthless articles on how everyone sucks. I am a good Magic player. I dare say I’m a damn good Magic player. And what’s more, I’m going to tell you how to be a better Magic player as well. The one thing that holds back a lot of competitive players back when trying to improve their game is one simple fact that no one wants to admit: playtesting is overrated. In fact, playtesting is borderline useless.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that you should ignore the metagame entirely and live with your head up your ass. What I am saying is that playing 100 games of Super Friends vs. Mythic Conscription isn’t going to make you a better player. In fact, it could have a severely detrimental effect on your game. When you playtest, you’re not actually playing Magic. You’re focusing on rote memorization of every possible situation two decks can wind up in against each other and trying to identify the correct play in these situations. However, this process fundamentally breaks down when you play against an altered version of a popular decklist or when your opponent pilots a deck in a way that your playtesting partners had not. When this happens, you wind up in a situation that you had not prepared for, and since all you did was prepare for specific situations and not prepare to play Magic, you’re pretty well fucked.

So then how does one become a better Magic player? My answer is going contrary to all conventional thinking so instead of disregarding it immediately, at least hear me out on this. The key to becoming better at this game we all love is casual multiplayer. Is your mind blown? Do you think I’m out of my fucking mind for suggesting such a ridiculous notion? Well read on, and perhaps you’ll become a believer as well.

There are a few principles at work in multiplayer that help improve your game. Possibly the most important is that aren’t throngs of websites dedicated to posting the top casual multiplayer decks. The notion of netdecking for a multiplayer game is not only foolish, but doing so would make you a total dick who no one would want to play with anyway. Being forced to build your own deck from scratch is something that many players haven’t bothered to experience since they discovered online decklists. I’m not saying that a few multiplayer games and you’ll be the top deck designer in the world, but after building your own multiplayer decks and being forced to make tough card choices, you will be able to immediately pick up a decklist and understand exactly why every single card is there, even if you disagree with some choices. While deckbuilding skill is the most important thing that most players need to work on, it’s still not actually related to your play skill. Admittedly, my best results at large tournaments were not with decks of my own design. However, they WERE with decks that I spent one hour or less playtesting, so I do actually know what I’m talking about here.

This brings us back to the original question: what about multiplayer improves your actual gameplay skill? To start, you will find yourself in absurd situations that will never happen in a constructed game. The less focused your deck is the more likely this is to happen, so I recommend grabbing a stack of 40 lands and 60 spells that you like, shuffle them up, and see what happens. This is how many of my decks start, and they’re the ones that will help teach you the most. Afterall, a combo deck in multiplayer is no different than a combo deck in standard: what you do is not related to the opponent in any way. However, a deck of good cards and little discernable strategy will ensure that you frequently wind up looking at the board and looking at your hand and wondering “How the Hell did this happen, and how do I get out of this situation?” This is where your skill starts to improve. Memorizing how two decks frequently play against each other doesn’t make you a better player, but winding up in ridiculous situations that you have to somehow reason your way out of with the resources available will. This directly leads into my next important point.

In multiplayer, your back is always against the wall. No matter how strong a board position you have, you still have multiple opponents who actively want to kill you. When you have a superior board position to your opponent, it’s easy to get away with play mistakes and not lose a game. When you’re fighting from a losing position, however, you can’t afford a single mistake or it just sets you back even further. This is even truer in multiplayer where every mistake you make can result in five people exploiting it and setting you back, or even killing you. Basically, a play mistake is like leaving yourself open in a boxing match. If you misstep you eat a haymaker to the face. In multiplayer, however, one misstep and you have one dude landing a haymaker, another guy putting a vise grip on your balls, and a third guy fucking your girlfriend. Needless to say this principle of compounded pain and suffering will severely reduce the number of play mistakes you make.

Believe it or not, multiplayer will also teach you to metagame. If you play with the same group of friends every week, you start to know each other’s decks, and you start to know which decks to fear. Instead of just fearing those decks, you start to figure out how to beat them with minor alterations to your current deck. If you don’t understand the parallel, this is EXACTLY what you should be doing when you netdeck. You take a stock decklist, figure out what the metagame at an event will be as best as you can, and then make alterations to the deck to prepare yourself for said metagame. This is not restricted to choices of sideboard cards. Metagaming in this way is important for a couple reasons. It prepares you for the real life metagaming that I just described, but it also will introduce you to cards that you didn’t even know existed. My first EDH deck was Ku Klux Karn (No colours allowed), and it dominated my new playgroup to the point where they almost didn’t want to play EDH anymore. Then one day something happened: one of my friends dropped down a Damping Matrix. Game over, Jeebus. Game over. Months later when the thopter combo decks became popular in extended, my friend didn’t even need to wait for someone online to figure out the solution, which took surprisingly long; he showed up at the store and bought three more matrices.

The final skill that multiplayer will teach you is more subtle. It’s hard to learn, but extremely powerful if you do. That skill is the art of the mind fuck. There are a couple components to this, and I will address each separately. The first component is learning to read your opponents and know what they have in their hand, as well as what it will take to make them cast it. In a multiplayer game recently, I was preparing to cast a Rites of Replication kicked with Doubling Season out…but what to target? There were some beastly creatures out. Creatures that said “If Jeebus gets another turn, everyone dies to these ten tokens.” However, there were also five other players still alive. Did any of them have mass removal? If so, would they use it, or were they in a position where they assumed I’d take out a few other players first giving them an opportunity to save it until it was more advantageous? Ultimately, I decided on my Primeval Titan. I got ten tokens, searched for twenty land ensuring I drew nothing but gas for the rest of the game, and promptly watched them all hit the graveyard the next turn. The other component of the mind fuck is controlling what your opponents think you have in your hand, what they think you’ll want to cast, and in multiplayer situations controlling who they target instead of you. There’s really no way to describe how to do any of this, but I will say you will get better at reading opponents in multiplayer faster than you will in one on one circumstances for the simple fact that there’s more of them to read, so you get more practice in.

Now we’ve covered all, or at least most, of the reasons multiplayer will make you a better player. You will also note that none of this carries over to standard playtesting techniques, as there is really nothing to be learned from such a practice. But you may be asking yourself, “Dr. Jeebus, what if I choose not to improve? What if I’m happy playing bad multiplayer decks and losing because I’m just having fun?” The answer to that is simple. Playing Magic is fun. Watching other people play Magic seldom is. When you scrub out at a PTQ, you go home and drink with your friends, and fun is had by all. When you scrub out in a multiplayer game, you sit there for potentially hours watching everyone else play without you. I think most people will agree that’s a far worse situation to be in than just leaving a tournament earlier than you hoped.

I hope you’ve learned a lot from this and that for many of you it has been an eye opener. Play some multiplayer with your friends and watch as you become a better player, a better deckbuilder, and probably even better friends. Just make sure you don’t make any play mistakes, or I’m fucking your girlfriend.

© 2010 by Dr. Jeebus

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There has been and still seems to be a lot of confusion regarding Wizard’s announcement of their new competitive preconstructed decks, related to both price and content, so I thought it best to take a moment to clear all of this confusion up.

These are clearly aimed at newer/casual players both as Arcana implies and because any real competitive player already has a tier 1 deck. Because of their target demographic, there is a very clear price point that cannot be violated. There has been a lot of talk about these decks being $35 or even $50, but the realistic range is $15-20; for the sake of argument we’ll say $20 is the correct price. So what other $20 products are marketing at this same demographic? Duel Decks, which is our best indicator of the expected value in one of the Grab-and-Go event decks. While there’s been a huge range, the Duel Decks are capable of packing quite a value in the $20 as Elspeth vs. Tezzeret and Jace vs. Chandra have shown us. That is also the maximum value you can try to cram into a $20 deck before retailers just say“fuck it” and start cracking them open to sell as singles.

Before anyone tries to argue this price point, which is really the crux of all other decisions, consider the Premium Deck Series: Slivers deck. That deck was marketed at the exact same demographic, and cost $35. That deck has been rotting on shelves for nearly a year now. Star City has 100 copies in stock marked down to $20, and Channel Fireball has dozens as well with them marked all the way down to the break even point. If an all foil sliver deck isn’t good enough for this demographic to spend $35 on, no preconstructed deck will be. (Note that this is also why the new Premium Deck Series product this year is showcasing cards like Chain Lightning; they’re targeting a different demographic to see if this product can work)

So what should we expect from the Grab-and-Go decks? I’d imagine something like this:

* $15-20 price point
* 2 mythic rares, 6-8 rares
* 3-4 ofs on all or most of the commons and uncommons
* A competitive deck that is unlikely to take first place

That’s right, these will NOT be tier 1 decks. Despite the fact that on the Wizards website they direct you to tournament results to check out the top decks for ideas, WotC doesn’t want to just hand you a tier 1 playable deck. First of all, it makes no business sense to sell a product that invalidates all their other products. Second of all, deck building is part of the fun of Magic. Also, they tell you to look to those lists for ideas, not to copy those decks card for card.

You may be wondering what the point of this product is if they’re not tier 1 decks, and what competitive means. Well it means just that, competitive. Many people show up to their first FNM or Game Day with an unplayable pile of shit that may be fun at the kitchen table with their friends, but gets anally raped before they’ve played their second spell. These decks can provide a solid, competitive shell of popular archetypes with standard sideboard cards for other various archetypes. It would be an excellent starting point for players, and allow them to really experience the game at a competitive level, even if it isn’t handing them the keys to victory.

So will some lazy competitive player be buying one of these Grab-and-Go Event Decks, getting a current tier 1 deck worth $400, and winning a Grand Prix? Not a chance. Will a player who wants to make the jump from casual to tournament player buy one of these decks on February 25th and then excitedly make the top 8 at Mirrodin Besieged Game Day on February 26th encouraging them to investigate upgrading their deck to something that is not only competitive, but dominating as well as scoring them a cool full art foil? I would wager that not only is that extraordinarily likely, that’s the entire point of this product.

© 2010 by Dr. Jeebus

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This is going to come as a surprise to many of you, but there are cards in Standard besides Baneslayer Angel and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

When mythic rares were introduced, they were met with mixed feelings. For many, they were seen as a desperate cash grab by Wizards to make people buy more packs. For others, they seemed long overdue, and why not? Every pack you opened, barring sorting errors, had a rare in it. Sometimes it was a money rare, which always felt really good to open. Well Wizards finally decided, “What if we could give people that feeling in every 8.07 packs they open?” Seriously, it’s time to be honest with yourself: don’t you feel pretty damn good when you open a mythic rare in a draft, even if it’s just a Nirkana Revenant or Felidar Sovereign? That is much of the rationale behind making mythic rares: opening them makes people happy, and a company wants customers to be happy with their product.

When Shards of Alara came out, the most expensive mythic was Sarkhan Vol at $30-35. Sure, it was expensive, but it also plummeted quickly. Elspeth is expensive now, but EVERYONE had the chance to buy her at $8 when the set debuted. Really, none of the mythic rares in Alara block are outrageously priced. Many of them are cool and flashy, but none of them are an automatic four-of in any deck running a particular color the way Path to Exile is.

Where it all went wrong was with M10 and Baneslayer Angel. Out of the gates, she was $30-35. The price started slipping, and life was good. Sure it was still like $15-20, but that’s not really unreasonable for a mythic rare angel that was potentially constructed playable. Then some asshole had to go and win Worlds with a deck running four Baneslayers, and she shot up faster than Bob Dole on Viagra. Suddenly, there was a $50 card in Standard, and according to the interwebs, the sky was falling. Then Jace came along and went up to $65-70 with Gideon Jura chasing behind at $40-45. With this many cards in Standard worth $40 or more, players made the only logical assumption: the world was ending, and mythic rares were to blame.

Yeah, too bad that assumption is moronic because this isn’t unprecedented. Tarmogoyf was upwards of $50 while it was in Standard, and that wasn’t a mythic rare. Hell, that was downright COMMON at 1 in every 40 packs, compared to Baneslayer at 1 in every 121 packs. When Faeries started dominating, Bitterblossom briefly reached $35-40 and Mutavault hit $45-50. Those prices were very short-lived and occurred at the height of Standard season, but there were still multiple cards with potentially unwieldy monetary costs. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing, but what I am saying is that mythic rares are not what caused this. Is it more common now? Absolutely not. Time Spiral had one prohibitively expensive card in Tarmogoyf, and Lorwyn had two with Bitterblossom and Mutavault. Similarly, Shards of Alara has Elspeth and Zendikar has Jace and Gideon. The price point of the mythics is admittedly higher, but in the time between Lorwyn and Zendikar, Magic experienced an unprecedented rate of growth, as evident by tournament attendance and product shortages. Higher demand, relatively stagnant supply.

So how about you quit whining about how terrible everything is and look at the actual good that’s coming out of mythics? Aside from that warm, fuzzy feeling of opening Mythics that I described earlier, there are still very positive effects on the singles market resulting from the mythic rarity. Magic players have a limited supply of money to spend on each set, which makes singles from every set have roughly the same total value. What this means is that since Jace is eating up $70 of the value that can be found in Worldwake, the prices on other good cards have to be lower. You can easily find any of the five manlands for $3-5. Do you have any idea how much those things would be worth if Jace didn’t exist? As highly sought after dual lands, $10-12 is a very realistic, if not conservative, estimate. That would put them at roughly the same price as the less popular Ravnica shock lands or the more popular Shadowmoor filter lands. Despite being chase rares, these new manlands carry a price tag similar to that of chase uncommons from the pre-mythic era like Treetop Village ($2-3 when it was in Standard) and Eternal Witness ($5-7 when it was in Standard). You can thank mythic rares for that price drop.

And finally, the most important thing that could be said about these expensive Mythic rares: if you don’t want to pay $50 for a Baneslayer, don’t fucking buy it! Seriously, do you NEED four Baneslayer Angels to win a tournament? With an eternity of Jund dominating Standard, it seems that you don’t need Baneslayer to win. In fact, according to Jund (until VERY recently), you didn’t need ANY mythic rares to win. And oh, did Jund win. Until recently, hearing that six of the top eight decks at a high level event were Jund wasn’t even considered news. You will never need expensive mythic rares to win at FNM or at a PTQ.

Oh, and one more thing… /Columbo>

Chances are, cards aren’t as expensive as you think. If you read this at thought that $70 for Jace and $3 for Lavaclaw Reaches are really low prices, you’re looking in the wrong place. There is one, and only one, source online that I trust as an accurate measure of what cards are worth: completed auction listings on eBay. Anyone with a website can charge whatever they want. Just because Star City says that Jace is worth $80 doesn’t mean that it actually is; it also doesn’t mean they’re selling any at that price. By looking at completed auctions only, you can see what buyers are actually willing to pay for cards, not what sellers think they can sucker out of you.

In conclusion, mythic rares have done absolutely nothing to hurt Magic. Perhaps the prohibitively expensive rares are slightly more prohibitively expensive, but the chase rares are now extraordinarily affordable. And remember: there will ALWAYS be inexpensive tier one alternatives to the Baneslayers of the world. Don’t like the current inexpensive tier one deck? Then quit netdecking and design your own damn deck, douchebag.

© 2010 by Dr. Jeebus

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