Tip of the Day #7: Nuts and Bolts

I'm a tinkerer, by nature, especially when it comes to building my own constructed lists or refining decks I dredge up from the corners of the internet.  In general, many competitive Magic players are constantly adding and removing cards from builds they find through coverage of professional tournaments.

The thing is, though, this is rarely the best course of action.  I never fully appreciated how well-tuned most winning decklists are until I finally gave up messing with what was working.

The truth is that a deck that takes down a Pro Tour is a honed machine, comprised of dozens of parts, assembled in such a way that it can repeat the task it was designed to do as many times as necessary.  If you imagine a deck like an engine, you'll understand that unscrewing one nut could lead to one hell of a Michael Bay style explosion.

When you are tempted to add just one Grave Titan because it should theoretically be good in the metagame you are expecting, you need to remember that you are taking something else out that had a purpose in the first place.

It can be even more problematic if you were not part of the team that originally built the list, and you swap in Rune Snags for Mana Leaks because of "the late game."  Sure, you might get away with it, and sometimes, your change may even end up being for the better, but more often than not, you just messed up the deck's basic plan.

The tip of the day is to be careful when you are re-wiring the security system of Bill Gates' house, you don't know which wires control the pirate-ninja robot butlers.

Tip of the Day #3

Quick note: For fans disappointed in the lack of longer form content, I hear you, and I have a few things in the works that I think you will really enjoy.  In the meantime, I will be posting another edition of The Road this week, and a writing article should appear on Sunday or Monday.


In the last TotD, I focused on your gameplan when it comes to selecting a deck and executing that plan when it comes time to game at a major tournament (or even FNM, for that matter).  One step I mostly left out was practice, and it's critical that you don't do the same.  Practice is important the way that having air to breathe is important.

If you're still alive then you appreciate what I'm saying.  One thing, I consider practice to be different from playesting.  You do practice while you playtest, but playtesting should also incorporate metagame considerations and developing strategies against specific decks.  When I practice, I'm generating sample hands and figuring out how the starting seven fits into my gameplan.  I even like to think out games in my head, visualizing the action and simulating cards drawn.  If you are thinking about how stupid that sounds, think about how you would imagine a game playing out with your deck.  You'd probably draw a pretty good hand, right?  And more than likely you'd be mise-ing like Budde in his prime, true?

Well, the reason this wish-fulfillment is useful is that it helps you recognize what the best hands for your deck are, which should lead to better mulligan decisions, and help you identify the optimal lines of play for your particular 75.

Speaking of mulligans...

Magic's Hole Cards: 5 Ways to Improve Video Coverage

If you're anything like me, you spent the weekend of Pro Tour: Dark Ascension ravenously devouring the delicious non-stop coverage that made you feel almost as if you were two thousand miles away and not on a beach.  And if you were, you might be wondering, why does this guy think the coverage needs improvement, because it was actually that awesome.

Almost this awesome.

Well, there might be one thing better than watching fantastic video of your favorite players making the wrong blocks that you would never in a million years have made on a twitchy Internet feed.  That would be watching on glorious High Definition delivered straight out of your over-priced 3-D television.

Imagine this, but in your living room.  In three dimensions.

Any more dimensions would be too awesome to comprehend/

And that could happen.  But it won't.  Not yet.  As Patrick Chapin discussed during a recent SCG Open event, Magic won't make it back to ESPN until there is a way for Joe Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, and the seven other people who would have voted for Sarah Palin to quickly get into the game and devise drinking competitions and side-bets.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions for how to make a good thing even better.  None of them involve laser beams, unfortunately.

Because you know you wanted it.

History Lesson #2: Where is Magic Going? (Bonus Post-Script Rant)

Starting this off, here is a list of the double-faced cards in Innistrad as if they were cards with no transform capability. (This list is in alphabetical order)

Bloodline Keeper, 2BB, Flying, T: Put a 2/2 Vampire into play with Flying, 3/3

Civilized Scholar, 2U, T: Draw a card, then discard a card, 0/1.

Cloistered Youth, 1W, 1/1

Daybreak Ranger, 2G, T: ~this~ deals 2 damage to target creature with flying, 2/2

Delver of Secrets, U, 1/1

Gatstaf Shepherd, 1G, 2/2

Grizzled Outcasts, 4G, 4/4

Hanweir Watchkeep, 2R, Defender, 1/5

Instigator Gang, 3R, Attacking creatures you control get +1/+0, 2/3

Kruin Outlaw, 1RR, First Strike, 2/2

Ludevic’s Test Subject, 1U, Defender, 0/3

Mayor of Avabruck, 1G, Other Human creatures you control get +1/+1.  1/1

Reckless Waif, R, 1/1

Screeching Bat, 2B, Flying, 2/2

Thraben Sentry, 3W, Vigilance, 2/2

Tormented Pariah, 3R, 3/2

Ulvenwald Mystics, 2GG, 3/3

Village Ironsmith, 1R, First Strike, 1/1

Villagers of Estwald, 2G, 2/3

I didn’t include Garruk since for the purposes of this article we don’t need to talk about Planeswalkers.  You can probably guess where I am going with this, but if you didn’t, here is another sort of list:

Krovikan Vampire, 3BB, At the beginning of each end step, if a creature dealt damage by ~this~ this turn died, put that card into play under your control, Sacrifice it when you lose control of Krovikan Vampire, 3/3

Krovikan Sorcer, 2U, T, Discard a nonblack card: Draw a card, T, Discard a black card: Draw two cards then discard one of them, 1/1.

Hipparion, 1W, ~this~ can’t block creatures with power 3 or greater unless you pay 1.

Pale Bears, 2G, Islandwalk, 2/2

Balduvian Shaman, U, T: Change the text of target white enchantment you control that doesn’t have cumulative upkeep by replacing all instances of one color word with another, that enchantment gains Cumulative Upkeep 1, 1/1

Balduvian Bears, 1G, 2/2

Folk of the Pines, 4G, 1G: ~this~ gets +1/+0 until end of turn, 2/5

Barbarian Guides, 2R, 2R, T: Choose a land type, Target creature you control gains snow landwalk of the chosen type until end of turn.  Return that creature to its owner’s hand at the beginning of the next end step.

Goblin Snowman, 3R, Whenever ~this~ blocks, prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to and dealt by it this turn, T: ~this~ deals 1 damage to target creature it’s blocking, 1/1

Balduvian Barbarians, 1RR, 3/2

Balduvian Conjurer, 1U, T: Target snow land becomes a 2/2 creature until end of turn.  It’s still a land, 0/2

Freyalise Supplicant, 1G, T, sacrifice a red or white creature: ~this~ deals damage to target creature or play equal to half the sacrificed creature’s power, rounded down.

Mountain Goat, R, Mountainwalk, 1/1

Flow of Maggots, 2B, Cumulative upkeep 1, Flow of Maggots can’t be blocked by non-Wall creatures, 2/2

Mercenaries, 3W, 3: The next time ~this~ would deal damage to you this turn, prevent that damage.  Any player may activate this ability, 3/3

Tor Giant, 3R, 3/3

Lhurgoyf, 2GG, ~this~ power is equal to the number of creature cards in all graveyards and its toughness is equal to that number plus 1, */*+1

Orcish Librarian, 1R, R, T: Look at the top eight cards of your library, exile four of them at random, then put the rest on top of your library in any order, 1/1

Dire Wolves, 2G, Dire Wolves has banding as long as you control a Plains, 2/2

Again, if you couldn’t tell, the second list is from Ice Age, arranged to correspond with the first list by rarity and/or at least casting cost.  What is humorous, and the goal of this juxtaposition, is to demonstrate that by and large you would probably rather play most of the creatures on the first list, despite the fact that they have been effectively neutered in terms of the modern game by having their transform sides taken away.

The history lesson for today is that even crappy, untransformed versions of creatures from 2011 are leaps-and-bounds better than the creatures of 1995.  So what does this mean?  Well, in this article, we will be discussing how much the game has changed, not only in the power creep attached to creature design, but the actual play of the game itself.