Smothering Tithe

Ravnica Allegiance brought a card that becomes more and more interesting to me in its uses, and I’m inclined to include it in more and more decks. That card is Smothering Tithe. I like tokens, I like mana and I like colour fixing. But Smothering Tithe is that much more.

The basic idea is that each turn, each opponent has the choice to either give me a treasure or pay . Either outcome is ok, because I gain some mana, or they spend a significant percentage of their mana, and slow down. Often, players include their own card draw, and that’ll give me even more mana to work with. But ultimately it allows my decks to really go off, when I force all opponents to draw multiple cards, often enough so they can’t actually pay the tithe. And then, I go either large or infinite.

Think how it’ll work in a 4 player game, and I gained some treasure, then use it to cast a big Prosperity. I draw cards, everyone draws cards, and I get a huge amount of treasure. Then I can chain it into another draw spell, like Skyscribing, get even more cards and more treasure.

There are some decks where I’m particularly interterestin in using Tithe in:

I really dig all the applications, from just creating “materials” for artifact decks, a little more ramp for some decks, and a combo piece for others, creating huge turns. It’s powerful enough to ‘warp’ some decks around it, like my Shu Yun deck which will have a few more wheel effects to enable Tithe.

Posted under Commander / EDH

Wiseman the Intentionally Apt

I got me some Keyforge decks, and while I haven’t had the chance to play them, I tried to analyse how to best take advantage of these decks. The first deck is called Wiseman the Intentionally Apt and it’s a Dis/Logos/Sanctum deck with a focus on trying to create card advantage, sculpting your hand for a big turn, with some disruption and a few minor combos.

Wiseman the Intentionally Apt

Dis

Arise!
Arise!
Control the Weak
Gateway to Dis
Gateway to Dis
Gateway to Dis
Hecatomb
Mind Barb
Snudge
Succubus
Tentacus
Flame-Wreathed

Logos

Foggify
Labwork
Phase Shift
Batdrone
Doc Bookton
Dr. Escotera
Quixo the “Adventurer”
Quixo the “Adventurer”
Mother
Mother
Replicator
Research Smoko

Sanctum

Cleansing Wave
Terms of Redress
Hallowed Blaster
Hallowed Blaster
Sigil of Brotherhood
Commander Remiel
Grey Monk
Lady Maxena
Protectrix
Grey Monk
Lady Maxena
Protectrix

Deck Statistics:

  • 19 Creatures
  • 13 Actions
  • 3 Artifacts
  • 1 Upgrades
  • 8 Bonus Æmber

I’ve run it through some Keyforge deck analyser, and the stats seem low. However, there are some really good cards in there. The deck doesn’t seem to get Æmber quickly, or have many option to control opponents Æmber, but it does control hands very well. There is some discard in Mind Barb, a Succubus to lower opponents’ handsizes, and two Mothers to increase your handsize. That, and some cards that draw you cards. A Succubus or Mother is probably a good opening.

From there, I can try to sculpt my hand, and get a big turn. One of the big synergies I have, that potentially set up a big hand are with my 3 Gateway to Dis and 2 Arise!s. Too bad Dis only has 3 creatures, but I can set up either other faction and get a big turn after I wiped the board.

It’s a shame I only have 3 Dis creatures, so I can’t make a big Dis turn, although if I end up with all 3 Dis creatures in play ánd a Hecatomb ánd an Arise! I can probably reap for 3, gain 4 more Æmber of Hecatomb, then repopulate my board. I guess sculpting my hand is important to pull that off. It may be too many hoops, though.

Logos offers me the Replicator, and some other reap triggers to abuse. A fun way to use this is with Commander Remiel, which allows me to use any non-Sanctum creature regardless which house I choose. The most comboish would be to use Snudge to bounce and set up… something. Repeated bouncing of Dr. Escotera?

I think there are reasons I could concider Logos my main house. It has to do with the Mothers and the card draw provided. While Mothers’ ability is static (and thus “on” even if I choose another house) there are some reasons to call Logos just for their board presence. In Keyforge, often you’ll have to choose between playing new cards and using the board. But my Logos has some compelling reason to use the Logos cards on the table. Not playing any cards from your hand means not seeing new cards in hand. Usually. But then I have these:

Two Quixo’s mean I can control the board a little, while keeping adding to my hand, even if I don’t have Logos to play. Skirmish means I don’t even get damage in return while I’m the aggressor. Doc Bookton gains me Æmber ánd new cards. Also fun with Replicator. Eventually, if left alone for long enough I’d be able to draw 4 cards a turn, even when I don’t play anything. It also offsets the chains I might get from Dis.

Sanctum has some strong healing going on. I don’t know how useful that will be, exactly, but I guess if I face small-ish creatures that can’t one-hit kill my guys they will tend to stick around, maybe? I will have to see what they can do for me. Sigil of Brotherhood means I at least get a big action turn even when I choose Logos at some point. Being able to use multiple houses seems strong.

Posted under Keyforge

Thoughts on KeyForge

So, Fantasy Flight Games worked with Richard Garfield and come up with an entire new class of card games. To be honest, I haven’t touched it yet, but the idea is intriguing. I don’t know if it’s my bubble, or if it really is making waves, but hey, it’s an entire new concept from the man who pretty much revolutionized card games.

The name of the game is KeyForge, and it’s an Unique Deck Game. What does that mean? It means that every deck you buy is a procedurally generated, unique deck. It also means that you’ll play the deck as it comes out of the box, without ever making changes to it. There is no deckbuilding.

This part I definately needed to warm up on. Part of why I like Magic: The Gathering is that it is a form of expression. I play the game the way I like to play it, with cards of my own choosing. But, reading the justifications Richard Gardfield made on the Unique Deck System it does make sense. Am I really free to play any deck in Magic? The truth is, there are so many cards that most cards just don’t ever make the cut in my decks, and the metagame forces my hand if I want to play something competative.

Sure, I play Commander a lot, which does allow me to include some pet cards, and Draft, which restricts my card pool, but in a Unique Deck Game all my cards are relevant. At least that’s efficient.

I will miss both customisation and “leveling up” my decks. The only way to improve a KeyForge deck is playing it and learning all the lines of play, and discover it’s potential. The only way to really “deckbuild” is to think of a hypothetical deck I want and buy the closest thing I can find on the secundairy market. – But that’s more of a hack than the intended way to play. And even then, the deck will never upgrade, only downgrade due to the chain system.

Yes, there are billions of possible decks, but there are around 50 different cards per House, and you get 12 of them in any deck. Since the Houses should at least have some self-synergy, the archetypes become at least a little bit limited, so some decks should at least share archetypes. Still, each deck has 3 houses, so there are still a lot of combinations. I also heard there is a chance a “Maverick” card shows up, where a card from a House is printed in a different House, which is exciting and throws the system a curveball. I don’t know how often that happens though.

Normally, Anaphiel is house Sanctum, but he can show up as a Maveric Untamed card.

Missing out on leveling up your deck and customising it does impact the balance though. And that is seen in the gameplay itself. Since you can’t throw in all the best cards you have and call it a deck, the game can offer some freedom, like the the complete abscence of a mana-system. In Magic, the factor limiting the amount of big, swingy cards is the mana system involved. You could put in 40 7-mana creatures, and all of them would be very powerful, but you’re likely to be overrun before you get started.

Since you dont make a KeyForge deck, the balance of the cards kinda has been dealt with already. Sure, it’s possible to play a couple ginormous monsters on your first turn, but the game has you covered.


Tabris is an example of a creature that can be considered “big.”

First, there is the house system. On each turn you can play and use and do other things with cards from one of your houses only. This often means that at one point you’ll have to choose between using cards on the table, or playing new ones.

The second is that this game is not about attacking opponents, but about forging keys. So, a big creature like Champion Tabris does have a good time fighting other creatures, but doesn’t help fighting opponents directly, since that option isn’t really there. So, while she is trouble, she doesn’t end the game much quicker than a small creature. The dynamic here is that you’ll have to forge 3 keys, and that can require Ember. Creatures are a way of generating Ember, but most of them ‘reap’ Ember one at a time. Combat is more about controlling how many creatures each player has, and how quickly they can generate Ember.

Another big difference with Magic is that in KeyForge, turns are isolated. This means that you can’t do anything on your opponents’ turn. So, no sudden counters or combat tricks. This does make the game a bit more accesable for some players. There is no frustration of having your spell countered, for example. While some players will miss this kind of interaction, it also forces you to play ahead a little more. However, it can create situations where things happen, and you don’t have an option to do anything about it. Then again, how often are such things relevant in a game of Magic?

So far, it seems like there where choices made that are defendible and make sense in context of this game. Also the cost of entry seems low; For just 10 euro you’ll have a deck. Sadly, that means missing out on some components, like Ember tokens, damage tokens and stun tokens, as well as the Chain tracker. These are included in the big, 40 euro box, which also has 2 random decks and 2 fixed decks. That’s a more expensive point of entry, but to be fair, still cheap compared to CCG’s in the long run.

The UDG (Unique Deck Game) system is pretty clever. The card game market is pretty saturated, and just a few CCG’s are doing fine. Magic has a solid fanbase, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh are doing fine internationally, but after that the player base drops off significantly. Fantasy Flight Games did move to the Living Card Game years ago, with fixed, you-know-what-is-in-the-pack expansions. Some of these games ended as well, because even coming up with 20 new cards monthly or so still is a lot of work.

The UDG Model means coming up with a significant card pool once, but since the decks are semi-random/procedurally generated, and you don’t upgrade your decks, the card pool can be sustained for quite a while. I do wonder about the future plans for this games, and changes to the card pool and other updates. The only expensive part about the game is that it requires special printing technologies to make every deck unique, not only in card contents, but in the procedurally generated card back and deck names. Also fun is that, at least with the print run, you can end up with some, let us say, unique decknames, as the algorith for generating decknames sometimes came up with some unfortunate combinations of words.

I don’t think that’s a bug, but a feature, however FFG ofcourse thinks differently. I can understand how they wanted to avoid printing a deck that’s called The Emperor Who Pays For Boys, for example. They fixed that problem in subsequent print runs, which means missing out on some collectors items.

Anyways, the procedural stuff makes creating new content quite sustainable, and this could be a game that’s around for years, even decades, maybe.

I did watch somes games on Youtube and the game looked like fun. I wonder how long you can milk a deck before getting bored with it, but getting a new one isn’t that expensive.

There are a few gripes I have, though. Granted, most of them apply to playing tournaments, and shouldn’t pose a problem in kitchen table games.

Once a card goes missing from your deck, it makes the entire deck useless. This means paying close attention in public places. I don’t know if someone will misplace a card on purpose to sabotage my deck – I doubt it – but if that happens, there is no replacing the missing card.

Then there is the “Check!” rule. If you have enough Ember to forge a key at your next turn, you’re supposed to warn the opponent and say “Check!” – I don’t know how enforcable this is in a tourney setting; You might say it, but your opponent isn’t paying attention somehow, then blames you for not saying it. It’s not one of the best rules. Everyone should pay attention to the gamestate by themselves, right? Also, the fact that you are forced to forge a key at the beginning of your turn if able seems like a weak rule. Now I have to remind you that you must take an action to win the game? I hope these weak rules go the way of manaburn. Pay attention to your own game!

As for tournament rules; FFG stated that if you want to sleeve a deck, use opague sleeves. This seems like a bit of a design flaw. Sure, it helps a bit against cheating, since every deck has a unique card back, and it helps avoiding sneaking in some good cards from other decks. But if the card front was better designed so such tricks are more obvious at a glance than they are now, this could have been avoided. What can I say, I like using sleeves to add a bit of personality to my decks. And transparent penny sleeves generally are flimsy and don’t shuffle well.

Then there was something said about using dice to keep track of stuff. I know, dice can roll over, but that’s a matter of responsibility. You can’t use dice though, according to the rules. Meh. It doesn’t help that the only reason to buy the 40 euro box are the cardboard components. Well, dice are perfect components. And since chains work with increments of 6, D6’s are good components to keep track of that too. And they’re good for helping keep track of damage on creatures, and work well as a stun counter.

These are minor, but somewhat aggrevating cases of meddling though.

What you get is a game where every opponent is (at least somewhat) different and you won’t face the same metagame deck one after the other. Entry is cheap, and for some people, building a deck is a huge hurdle. KeyForge is pickup and go. You’ll own a one-of-a-kind thing, with it’s unique name and card back. Reception has been good, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find other players, eventually. Pick it up quickly enough and you have a chance of getting a really problematic deckname, which are banned in tournaments, but at the very least make a good, unique collectors item.

 

 

 

Posted under Other games

Golgari Explore

It’s time to also develop a second deck in Arena, and I’m interested in a Golgari build. In fact, it’s going to have similarities to my Dimir deck, but instead of surveil, it’s going to explore. I can port some cards over between decks, because surveil and explore are similar in ways; Both are scry-alike mechanics that are able to dump things in the graveyard. I can imagine things will converge from there, and I might even end up with a Sultai () deck, with at least a splash of for… Muldrotha, the Gravetide, maybe?


Also the Golgari has the best logo of all Guilds.

So, why explore? Well, there are a lot of aggressive decks, and red is getting more and more traction with decks around Runaway Steam-Kin and Experimental Frenzy, so I want to run some Wildgrowth Walkers to have an escalating threat, that also gains me life. And explore allows me to dump creatures from the top of my deck into the graveyard, almost as good as Surveil does, but I have more, or better recursion available to take advantage of that.

I also like Journey to Eternity a lot. Once set up, I quickly get full access to my graveyard, especially in unison with Golgari Findbroker. And there are other cool synergies to be found:

Stitcher’s Supplier and Plaguecrafter feel like a one-two (or one-three, if you look at CMC)  punch that fills the grave with cool stuff. Plaguecrafter also makes it easier to use Journey, and set up quite a bit of a string of sacrifice effects the Atzal.

Ideally, I’m looking for something to sacrifice my creatures to, to help activating Atzal, and to keep reusing enter the battlefield effects. So far, I have seen a lot that can help with that.

Doom Whisperer is a good way to set up Explores, as well as filling the graveyard. Since I use 2 in my Dimir deck, it’s an easy include.

At it’s core, it looks like something like this:

~ Golgari Reanimator ~

Exploration Suite (12)


Merfolk Branchwalker
Seekers’ Squire
Wildgrowth Walker

Graveyard Filling (8)


Stitcher’s Supplier
Plaguecrafter

Reanimation and Recursion (8)


Find // Finality
Golgari Findbroker
Journey to Eternity

Reanimation Targets (4)


Doom Whisperer
Izoni, Thousand-Eyed

Removal (4)


Ravenous Chupacabra

Lands (24)


Forest
Golgari Guildgate
Overgrown Tomb
Swamp
Woodland Cemetery

This is only the base of the deck, and from there things can be added. Maybe some incarnation of Vraska, or Assassin’s Trophy, or maybe a Lotleth Giant as a finisher. Once the base is there, I can test different variations and single cards and tweak the numbers. I do like decks that have card selection and snowballing synergies.

Posted under Standard

Phyrexian Scriptures

Now I’m strongly concidering Phyrexian Scriptures in my Dimir deck. One of the things I have problems with is decks that go wide, or decks that have hexproof creatures. Scriptures is a good way to deal with those, I think. The downside is the delay in destroying things, giving opponents the chance to deal with scriptures. At least it’s an extra counter that can be useful for Thoughtbound Phantasm, and it makes Nightveil Predator even harder to deal with.

It also seems like a card worth getting, because it also works very nicely in Golgari decks, because it’s a recursive wrath effect with Golgari Findbroker. Another positive thing the Scriptures does is dealing with graveyards. This puts a lot of pressure on decks that use the graveyard, and with Jump-Start and Undergrowth, a lot of decks actually use the graveyard.

So, it’s worth testing. Maybe some sorcery-based Wrath is better, because I run Mission Briefing, but I can’t pinpoint the exact card I want to use. Ritual of Soot is the closest competition, but unlocking that in Arena doesn’t conflict with Scriptures, due to it being from a different set that I can draft, and being a different rarity, and it deals with a different subset of creatures.

 

Posted under Standard

Dimir Sinister Surveilance Update

The Magic Arena version of my deck is still slowly getting closer to my ideal version. Sidestepping to other cards shows what works and what doesn’t, even though some cards will work better in context once I get the right amount of cards around it. My general philosophy on deckbuilding is using 4x the cards I like when possible, because if it’s good enough to play it should be good enough to be in there 4 times; This deck is becoming a hotchpotch of 2x or 3x cards. This is because I have a lot of card selection, and the cards are different approaches to the same result, all slighty different so they work better in different situations.

An example is Etrata. I’m not 100% sure about her. I want a big wall that I can use as a removal when needed, or as an attacker when the board is clear. She’s fine, but so far she doesn’t solve the problem when I play against another control deck, and that is having a persistant threat on the table. But there are other cards that fill a similar role, while being very good in a situation the rest of the deck has trouble handling. So, maybe I want to run Nightveil Predator instead. A flying deathtouch creature still works well as a “wall” and trades with most of the things that get thrown at me, all the while being resiliant against spot removal.

In fact, when playing a mirror match I see Etrata once in a while, and I simply kill her with a removal spell, but my deck roled over when faced with a Nightveil Predator, because I simply couldn’t touch it. This is partly because I didn’t have enough Dimir Spybugs, Thought Erasures or Sinister Sabotages to actually handle it, yet, but I think the Predator simply works better as a standalone threat than Etrata.

In a similar slot is Hostage Taker. She works as a removal spell, and sometimes I get some card advantage out of her, by stealing an opposing creature. There are some issues that they have a chance to get their creature back, and bouncing something I have stolen is something that comes up often enough.

The same problem happens with Thief of Sanity. I do note that I’m often happy to see one, more than I am to see Darkblade Agent, but there are risks involved.  Thief is slightly more vulnerable than Agent, but doesn’t require to be “turned on” for card advantage, and it’s more evasive. I think I’ll replace the Thieves eventually, especially once I complete my disruption package:

The cards  I’m debating in that disruption package are Thought Erasure and Sinistar Sabotage.  On one hand, Thought Erasure a cheap surveil spell, and it makes me feel a lot more safe when I know what my opponent is doing, and I get rid of a removal spell that could ruin my plans. It’s a really good card. The downside is that, while it can remove things I normally can’t deal with, it also does so without costing my opponent mana. When I counter something with Sinister Sabotage, at least it means my opponent invested in the card I’m trying to stop. Sabotage requires me to keep mana open, though, and since my mana isn’t optimised yet, keeping open is dificult. Especially if I want to use Mission Briefing to keep open to counter things. Mission Briefing is a big part in my toolbox strategy, but difficult on mana. I run 2, which somewhat counts as 2 additional copies of any particular spell. The manabase might need some rework to make it work better, I’m often lacking to do the things I want to do.

Notion Rain is a card I was reluctant to spend card slots on. I certainly don’t want to play 4 of it, because of the life cost involved. So far I was happy to see this one though. Digging 4 cards deep and gaining card advantage often helped, but against very aggressive decks it sometimes becomes a dead card, because I can’t afford the 2 life. I haven’t experienced Disinformation Campaign yet, which is a similar draw spell, plus disruption, which might be a reasonable alternative, and gains me more value over time.

The current goal is:

~ Dimir Sinister Surveilance (version 4) ~

Creatures (18)


Doom Whisperer
Dimir Spybug
Nightveil Predator
Nightveil Sprite
Thief of Sanity
Thoughtbound Phantasm

Spells (18)


Cast Down
Discovery // Dispersal
Notion Rain
Mission briefing
Price of Fame
Sinister Sabotage
Thought Erasure

Enchantments (2)


Disinformation Campaign

Lands (22)


Drowned Catacomb
Island
Memorial to Folly
Memorial to Genius
Swamp
Watery Grave

Sideboard (15)


Duress
Golden Demise
Moment of Craving
Nightveil Predator
Selective Snare
Vraska’s Contempt

Land wise I might also include Memorial to Folly and Memorial to Genius. I’m not commited to these, because they come into play tapped. My live version still includes some Dimir Guildgates, and having lands come into play tapped so far hasn’t been a huge downside, but it’s obvious something you want to avoid. Memorial to Genius seems like a poor man’s Search for Azcanta however. It remains to be seen if a tapped land basically counts as half a landdrop, or if Azcanta can be reliably flipped to count as a land drop. Azcanta helps digging for lands early on and digging for spells later on, but I want to avoid getting too little lands in my opening hand, and have a higher chance of early manascrew.

That said, the opportunity cost seems low, and Folly enhances my threat density, while Genius gives me a chance at card advantage. I’m not exactly expecting miracles here, but they might give me some incidental advantage, for example when I’m holding up counters, but nothing gets played.

And even though I usually don’t play best out of 3, it’s nice to have an idea for a sideboard for when there is an event. There are extra Nightveil Predators in there, for when I play against other control decks. Then there are mass removal effects against tokens. Moment of Craving for decks with small creatures, to give some live padding. Vraska’s Contempt also gives me some life and also deals with Planeswalkers. There are some Duresses to deal with spell heavy decks. Duress might miss more than Thought Erasure, but it can come in when there are more targets for it.


Now that Guilds of Ravnica draft is life, I have something to grind towards. The plan is to draft for missing pieces, and do more and more testing. Even though I’m not having the version I want of the deck, yet, the performance seems good enough that it wins more than it loses. I expect that problem matchups will become more prominent. That is, fast, aggressive red decks and decks that create lots of tokens, but that the final version also becomes more resiliant to those decks.

Posted under Commander / EDH

This is the current version of the deck I’m trying to collect. There are 18 cards that surveil, and 12 that trigger of surveil. I think that triggering surveil is the most important part of the deck, and 18 is the minimum so I can do it somewhat reliably ervery turn. The Nightveil Sprites and Doom Whispererers offer repeated surveilance, which help consistancy.

I removed the Syncopates and brought in the Etratas. Both are not surveil related and different approaches to control.

The deck is still somewhat weak to flyers and mass tokens. (I see a lot of vampire tokens and Sylesnia is gaining traction.) I mentioned Mephetic Vapors as a possible solution for go-wide strategies, but I think that Golden Demise is a better choice, as it hits more things, while possibly leaving my side of the board uneffected. I do consider these things sideboard solutions, and in Arena I generally don’t play best out of three, so inclusion will be a metagame choice.

~ Dimir Sinister Surveilance (version 3) ~

Creatures (18)


Darkblade Agent
Doom Whisperer
Dimir Spybug
Etrata, the Silencer
Nightveil Sprite
Thief of Sanity
Thoughtbound Phantasm

Spells (18)


Cast Down
Discovery // Dispersal
Notion Rain
Mission briefing
Price of Fame
Sinister Sabotage
Thought Erasure

Enchantments (2)


Disinformation Campaign

Lands (22)


Drowned Catacomb
Watery Grave
Island
Swamp

The 2 Nightveil Sprites could still be House Guildmages, the latter being more mana-intensive, but they can lock down a creature and don’t have to attack to surveil. Testing should indicate which one I like better.

I think I’ll skip on Search for Azcanta, for now. It’s nice to dig for answers, but I’m somewhat out of space for it. I also went down on Sinister Sabotage, because I wanted to include Mission Briefings, which is a more flexible spell, and it still keeps a bit of the control elements. I’d like to have more counterspells to protect my stuff, but for now this is how I see the numbers. Maybe I go down one Dimir Spybug for a Sinister Sabotage, and up the surveil count a little.

Posted under Commander / EDH

Dimir Sinister Surveilance, part 3

I’m slowly grinding towards my favoured build of Sinister Surveilance in Arena. I’m still missing some key pieces, but at least I have two Doom Whisperers in the deck, and I’ve substituted some cards with things I have available. This allows me to experiment a little, to see what cards I like in practice.

So, I put in a single Hostage Taker, since I unlocked one. This counts as a removal spell that potentially turns into multiple blockers. So far I liked it for this deck, even if it doesn’t do anything with surveil. But often it’s a source of card advantage.

This does lead me into thinking about a card that is in some ways similar: Etrata, the Silencer. It’s easy to look at Etrata and think “Hey 3 hits wins me the game!” but in practice, she will function as a 3/5 wall that discourages opponents from casting their bombs, and that I sometimes can cash in as a removal spell, for instance against flyers that she can’t block. Sure, it’s a Dimir control deck, with lots of surveil, and it’s not impossible to win with hit counters, but I don’t see that happen very often while I only include one or two of her.

So, I’ll be testing her for her ability to make me not lose that game, not for her ability to win me the game (It’s a nice bonus if she can manage that though.) If I like her wel enough that she’ll become a 3 or 4 of, and shift the focus towards her, it’s a different story. Then I can conceivably win with her more often.

Another plus of Etrata is that she can help deal with some random planeswalkers I encounter. The unblockable damage can keep them manageable, and she doesn’t shuffle herself when she hits one, so she’ll keep on the pressure on those things.

I’m looking forward to try her out. Once my deck develops and I have more Thought Erasures to see what opponents are up to and to disable any removal or tricks they have, having utility creatures like this is probably going to work better. Etrata should make people more nervous too.

Having a big “wall” to stem the bleeding is one thing. I encounter a lot of token decks, and making it costly to attack into me is one thing, but my focus on dealing with threats one for one sometimes causes me to be overrun. For that reason I may want to include some mass removal. Mephitic Vapors is one option, but -1/-1 isn’t enough in general. Ritual of Soot is a little better, but it also deals with my Thoughtbound Phantasms.

Other cards concidered are River’s Rebuke and Find // Finality, but at 6 mana they might be too expensive to deal with the problem of quick decks. Find // Finality also forces me to splash if I want to use it as a boardwipe.

I think Selective Snare might be the best choice here. Heroic Reinforcements often kills me, and the combination of the sudden boost and haste makes a sorcery speed solution less of an ideal pick, but I have Sinister Sabotage for that. For other mass soldier, saproling or vampire token decks, it seems like a good solution, that is flexible enough to work as an early tempo play. I would have loved it as an instant, but what can you do. As long as the many tokens are a big part of the metagame, it certainly is a card to try out.

The deck is still very much a work in progress, and it’s all about tweaking the numbers. I want to have enough surveil cards to keep my draws smooth and enable the synergies. Doom Whisperer and Notion Rain are good sources of surveil, but they really dig into my life total. I’m not yet quite prepared to spend some slots on Creeping Chill or Whispering Snitch, though the latter can become a split 2 and 2 with Dimir Spybug, for a slightly more defensive stance and more long term value.

 

Posted under Commander / EDH

Erratic Inversion

One of the cards from Guilds of Ravnica I want to brew around is Erratic Cyclops. I always liked Nivix Cyclops, and I want to use the bigger version of this Big Daddy.

I want to see how crazy I can make this as an attacker, having a deck that throws huge haymakers at my opponents. One of the tricks to use is Invert // Invent. This alone turns the cyclops into a 8/1 attacker. Another trick I thought of is using Dive Down, as it is a cheap trick that allows me to protect the cyclops, as well as adding +3/+1 when I get to Invert it afterwards. Then there is Sure Strike, which adds +5/+0 and first strike. This all makes a nice core to expand upon.

Another card I’d like to try is Runaway Steam-Kin. It seems these can grow fast enough to pose a threat, and there is always the option to cash in the counters for so I can get another spell off.

The list is a bit all-in, but it seems fun to try:

~ Erratic Inversion ~

Creatures (12)


Erratic Cyclops
Goblin Electromancer
Runaway Steam-Kin

Instants (25)


Dive Down
Expansion // Explosion
Inescapable Blaze
Invert // Invent
Lightning Strike
Risk Factor
Run Amok
Sure Strike

Sorcery (1)


Banefire

Lands (22)


Island
12 Mountain
Steam Vents
Sulfur Falls

Choosing spell, I went for as much red spells as possible, so that when I can “storm off” I can get the most out of Runaway Steam-Kin.

I wanted Inescapable Blaze as a finisher spell at the top-end. However, since I also run 4x Invert // Invent, I decided to add one Banefire instead of the second Blaze so I can find both with Invent, and set up big uncounterable damage on the turns following, as an extra avenue to victory. Testing will show if the sorcery speed and 1 less damage for CMC is worth it.

So, that’s the plan. Get in for some chip damage, then finish off with a huge strike. To be fair, it doesn’t look entirely practical, but I feel there is potential here.

One of the important things I’m missing here is double strike. It would have been nice to have a Temur Battle Rage or Uncaged Fury in standard, but unfortunately, the only available card gives double strike to pirates. So, maybe we’ll see that once Rakdos enters the fray, but for now we’ll have to use regular pump spells, so I’ll use Run Amok as backup Sure Strikes. Depending on how this’ll work out, they may get replaced by Trumpet Blasts for a team-wide boost. Given I only run 12 creatures, that doesn’t seem likely though.

 

Posted under Commander / EDH

Dimir Sinister Surveilance – continued

I had a draft yesterday, and I was the only Dimir player at the table. Sadly, there weren’t many payoff cards to surveil, mainly just Darkblade Agents and a Dimir Spybug. No Thoughtbound Phantasms or Disinformation Campaigns in sight. Still, the deck was strong due to the insane amount of card selection. It was like having a virtual Search for Azcanta in play the whole time. Maybe Search for Azcanta is a good card in a Surveil deck, too, because it has surveil in all but it’s name (and that means it doesn’t trigger the Phantasms and Bugs.) Azcanta is ultimately a good source of card advantage though, especially since you can set up your deck with surveil.



I think it’s worth testing. The initial deck has 19 instants and sorceries, and 3 Disinformation Campaigns that can be found, so the chance of hitting something is high enough. It has potential late game, since my build is a bit controlling.

But I but I digress. In the draft I had a Thought Erasure, and that card did so much work, even without having too many good surveil triggers. Just getting all the information, disrupting my opponents hand ánd fixing my draws is so much for just . I basically want more of these. I’m also looking at what other surveil decks are doing.



Some versions are less of a control deck, and more of a combo deck. The working theory is that if you control multiples of Dimir Spybug and Thoughtbound Phantasm, Doom Whisperer becomes a Hatred effect. This is helped by Creeping Chill, for additional drain and life gain.

I don’t know about Creeping Chill.  With enough surveil you can reduce the chance to actually have to cast it, and it gives a free 6 life swing. When it does go to your hand, it’s a bad card though.

~ Dimir Sinister Surveilance (version 2) ~

Creatures (16)


Darkblade Agent
Doom Whisperer
Dimir Spybug
Nightveil Sprite
Thief of Sanity
Thoughtbound Phantasm

Spells (19)


Cast Down
Discovery // Dispersal
Notion Rain
Price of Fame
Sinister Sabotage
Syncopate
Thought Erasure

Enchantments (3)


Disinformation Campaign
Search for Azcanta

Lands (22)


Drowned Catacomb
Watery Grave
Island
Swamp

The changes:

  • -2 Dimir Informant: The Informants are excellent blockers, but ultimately the weakest cards in the deck. Probably.
  • -1 Discovery // Dispersal: It’s flexible, but I want to try 1 Azcanta in this slot.
  • -1 Notion Rain: It digs deep and draw a lot of cards. It’s also sorcery speed, which I want to avoid. This card is also on the bubble because of Mission Briefing, which may or may not be the better “draw” and card selection spell.
  • -1 Disinformation Campaign: I don’t think it’s good in multiples, so one gets cut for now.
  • +2 Doom Whisperer: Doom Whisperer is actually a good finisher once you know it’s safe to cast it.
  • +2 Thougt Erasure: So far I’ve been always happy when I cast this. Knowing what your opponent is holding and being able to do something about it, and planning your plays around it is very valuable.
  • +1 Search for Azcanta: I hope it gives me an edge in the very long game, by giving me instant card selection and draw. It might turn back into a Notion Rain, where I get the card selection and draw now, instead of over time.
Posted under Commander / EDH
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