The Modern Era

I don't feel particularly ashamed about how terribly the deck in my last article wound up. The thought behind bringing Arcane Melee up yet again was that the Destroy All Monsters tactic might actually be possible with enough recursion.

"No, I don't really have lifegain. But as long as I kill EVERYTHING FOREVER, I won't even lose life in the first place!"

Eh.

I don't think it can really be done. I wasn't convinced that it could when I wrote the article; I tried to make it pretty clear that it was more of an experiment and I didn't necessarily expect it to work out. But when it went as badly as it did I became pretty disenchanted with Standard. The kind of deck I like to play just isn't the kind of deck you can play. So I'm done with Standard for a while. In a moment, I'll talk to you about my new love. But first, story time!

Forcing Grixis: an (Ostensibly) Comprehensive look at the Standard Metagame and How to Make it Cry

I found myself once again Pondering the viability of Arcane Melee.

Now, usually when it's in my top three, I shuffle it away and hope to draw something else. But something changed in my thinking today.

We are playing in a very grind-y format. What I mean is that the games can and often do take 15 or more turns, and a good deck is prepared for that.

That's not to say that it's a slow format. Watching the aggro decks curve out right now is a scary thing. Turn four kills are all over the place. But that doesn't really mean anything unless your deck can also go toe-to-toe with a couple Thragtusks. You might be able to kill somebody turn four with a Selesnya-Charm'd Loxodon Smiter soulbonded with a Wolfir Silverheart being shot-putted by an Ajani, but your goal isn't just doing twenty damage anymore. Infect is out and life-gain is in. You have to be ready to be able to topdeck to victory.

So what does that mean for a control player?

Well, uh... it means Sphinx's Revelation.

Yes, but, besides that.

The In-Between Times: Judging a Book by its Cover

UR Delver was a fun, relatively strong deck that did alright at Friday Night Magic, but wasn't going to change the world any time soon and wasn't all that fun to play (except the look on my opponents' faces as horrible repressed memories bubbled to the surface whenever I flipped a Delver on turn two).

Electrocombo was incredibly fun, but also pretty bad. A much better list popped up in an MTGO Daily Event (here, third deck down). I'm sure the guy came up with his brew independent of my article, but a kid can dream, right?

In any case, I'm kind of stuck on what I want to work on right now. I'm restricted pretty heavily by budget, so I can't really commit to a deck right now to work on. The problem with brewing right now is that the format is so wide open, even the pros are playing insane decks!

Five Color Control is completely viable right now, and decks are going big playing Temporal Masteries and Increasing Ambitions and Door to Nothingness like it's nobody's business. Where does that leave me, the Uniquely Rebellious Teenage Girl Deckbuilder?

I don't know where we go when people are maindecking Omniscience at Star City Games Opens.

UR Electrocombo: Standard's (Im)Perfect Storm

Before I get started here, I need to make sure we're all on the same page about something: this deck is what we in the business call For Funsies. It's not for winning tournaments, it's more of the Impress Your Friends Dazzle Your Enemies kind of thing. If you're bored, I strongly encourage taking this deck to FNM. You probably (almost definitely) won't win, but you'll have a blast and definitely turn some heads. There are very few moments in many years of playing Magic that top being able to say, as loudly as I could, I'LL CAST EPIC EXPERIMENT FOR 27. I won that match.

I lost all the others, but god dammit did I win that one.

Anyway, enjoy the show!

The Idea

UR Electroburn was the name of the first deck I played at Friday Night Magic this standard season. I liked it because it was a different take on Mono Red aggro and—more importantly—the name was sweet. It was a tough time when I realized Goblin Electromancer kinda sucked and that I had to rename the deck. So finding a new home for him was obviously top priority when I was looking for something crazy to play last week.

Before Return to Ravnica came out, there was a Burn at the Stake combo deck that floated around a bit online. It was pretty awful, but it was cool seeing people that could kill you with one spell if you durdled too much. The thing that made the deck particularly bad was its reliance on Kudoltha Rebirth; you had to run a bunch of do-nothing artifacts like Ichor Wellspring and Mycosynth Wellspring to even cast it, making the one red mana a lot less efficient than it looks.

Once you had some tokens on the board, though, you could use Infernal Plunge and Battle Hymn to produce mana, then cast Past in Flames to do it all again, using Reforge the Soul to refill your hand. By about turn 6 or 7, you could actually just draw your entire deck using that engine, then kill them with Burn at the Stake tapping the 50 tokens you just made.

Post-rotation, we have even fewer sources of creature tokens (Krenko's Command and Thatcher Revolt), and still only two spells that generate mana (Infernal Plunge and Battle Hymn. But Goblin Electromancer actually just takes the power level of the deck and kicks it straight in the balls.

Sticking an Electromancer for a couple turns is no small feat; but if (big IF) you can, you can win on turn 3.

Some Quick Thoughts on Desperate Ravings

I've been having quite a few ideas for posts recently. Maybe that means I'm just really good at blogging (I am blossome), or maybe I'm gonna burn myself out and get sick of Magic and never write again. Thank God nobody reads this thing or I'd be freaking right the fuck out right now.

I had a thought today (!) about Desperate Ravings while playing online. It's hard to evaluate what exactly the card does to your hand. Because, you know, Variance. A lot of people write about variance. So I'll spare you my thoughts. Just know that it doesn't just mean "randomness". It refers to how random something is; how far the results are spread out. When we talk about variance in Magic, we're usually referring to the amount of randomness in Magic itself, relative to... life? I guess? There is "some variance" in Magic, which governs our lives and makes us its bitch.

When you cast Desperate Ravings, the variance... varies. There's a variety of situations. Insert stream of V alliteration here.

For the moment, we're throwing out graveyard interaction and we're throwing out mill as a win condition. Pretend, for a moment, that any card that would be put into your graveyard gets put on the bottom of your library instead. And I guess pretend Cellar Door doesn't exist (weren't you already?). How does Desperate Ravings affect your hand?

The Obsolescence of Quintessential Disparate Grandiolquence

Before we get started, one thing:

I totally called Archwing Dragon being an awesome sideboard card.

I have evidence.

I feel awesome.

The last deck I wrote about pretty clearly foreshadowed my great desire to play U/R. Mono Red is (and, more or less, has always been) a cheap and easy way to play a relevant deck in Standard, so I play it a lot. I'm cheap and I like easy things. The thing that I found interesting, though, was the staunch digital-ness of Red Deck Wins. If you're playing Mono Red, you're playing Mountains. If you have any other color of mana in the deck, you're playing a completely different deck. Maybe you're playing Boros humans. But if so, you're very white. It's at least 50/50 or even less red than that.

Our mana is very good right now. It'll be better in Post-Gatecrash Standard, but the fact is, Shocks are the second best Dual Lands in the game. So it seemed natural that now would be the time to take mono-colored decks and de-mono them. But what do I know.

Anyway, I didn't really get the Steam Vents, Sulfur Falls and Snapcasters so much for that deck as I did because I like those cards. I mean, look at them.

Mmm...

Holding a playset of each of those cards just feels sweet. If a format has red and blue in it, I'm probably trying to play them. Niv-Mizzet is the Commander of my only EDH deck. If I ever build a Modern deck, it'll be U/R Electromancer/Pyro Storm. I build Izzet whenever I play RtR limited. When I play Legacy on Cockatrice, it's U/W/R Miracles. Granted, the red is just a splash in the sideboard, but there's Volcanic Islands and Snapcasters, dammit.

Anyway, two weeks ago at FNM I decided to finally build the deck that I had been toying with for a few weeks and built U/R Delver.

I have some frickin' opinions about the state of the Delver deck. I feel like there are a couple very obvious problems with the way people are trying to pull it off, and I'm pretty sure it's a Deck. Tell me if you guys think I'm crazy.

Red Decks and You: Snappy McCastertons Edition.

Alright, alright. That last list was bad. Let's move past it, shall we?

This time I'm running a deck into which I've actually put a lot of thought. Ever since I started playing in FNM's and got "competitive", I've had a soft spot for mono-red. It's cheap to play, it pisses people off, and when it does--as it claims to--win, it wins hard. I've been tuning this guy for about a week and half, and it feels pretty damn strong. I'm very sad that I had to cut the Goblin Electromancers (it sucks, apparently), because I had an awesome name for it that I may try to stick with anyway:

Goblin Electroburn:

Creatures (25):
4 Ash Zealot
4 Gore-House Chainwalker
3 Guttersnipe
2 Hellrider
4 Rakdos Cackler
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Stonewright
4 Stromkirk Noble

Instant (8):
4 Brimstone Volley
4 Searing Spear

Sorcery (6)
2 Nightbird's Clutches
4 Pillar of Flame

Land (21):
2 Desolate Lighthouse
11 Mountain
4 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls

Sideboard:
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Archwing Dragon
3 Forge Devil
2 Reckless Waif
4 Essence Scatter
3 Flames of the Firebrand

This looked a lot different last week (Goblin Electromancers, Nivmagus Elemental (!), Blistercoil Weird...); then THIS happened. The deck hit 10th place, which is very good for a mono-red list these days. Variance is a thing, so is player skill. It definitely could've top-8'd, and maybe even won. But I really just don't think there's any reason to be playing a mono-colored deck in this format. We have freakin' shock lands!

Anyway, you already know why cards like Rakdos Cackler, Ash Zealot, and Gore-House Chainwalker are in here. They're cheap and they do damage. Sold. But let's talk about some of the less-obvious choices.

Guttersnipe: Anders only played one-, two-, and four-drop creatures in his deck. So I've smoothed out the curve a bit by adding this house. He pushes a LOT of damage through when you can keep him out: to the point where he becomes a must-kill. This guy gets smacked down right-fast in the decks that can deal with him, which is fine by me. When I play a turn 3 Guttersnipe and it gets answered with an Ultimate Price, they better hope they have another one for my Hellrider on the next turn. If they don't kill the Guttersnipe, well... I hear Brimstone Volley for 7 is pretty good.

Snapcaster Mage: I often find myself dropping him EoT turn 2, or even flashing him in for a trade. Snapcaster is--and always has been--good not only for his effect, but his body. He has very positive synergy with Guttersnipe, and both provide valuable reach to eke out those last 5ish life points to end the game. I understand how counter-intuitive it is to play him in the same list as Ash Zealot. But I really just need you to take my word on this one and give it a shot. Snapcaster Mage is VERY good in this deck. And if you still have your turn 2 Ash Zealot by the time you're flashing back Searing Spear with Snapcaster, you're already winning the game. You can spare the 3 life.

Nightbird's Clutches: Now, this isn't my tech. So I can sort of let results speak for themselves and point to Anders on this one. But I wanted to say one thing about it: Holy bajeezers! I truly believe that aggressive strategies would absolutely dominate the format if it weren't for Thragtusk. The incidental life gain is very good, but it's the two blockers that really kill you. So the simple answer is 'Clutch away! We'll get to the less-simple one when we hit the sideboard.

Desolate Lighthouse: There's a term that I learned about in Economics called "opportunity cost". It's something Patrick Chapin talks about a lot, and for good reason. Every card has a mana cost. Maybe it has additional costs or a Kicker or Buyback. But the super-secret extra cost that doctors don't want you to know about is the card's opportunity cost: what could you have instead? Taking the day off to go Skiing costs the price of a lift ticket, gas, food, etc. But there's also an opportunity cost associated with such an endeavor: You could be working and making money. The amount of money you could've made that day is an opportunity cost that makes that half-off lift ticket look a lot less half-off. When you play a utility land, you pay the opportunity cost of making colored mana. The low opportunity cost of having a man-land come into play tapped wasn't too much for people to play the hell out of the Worldwake Manlands. So even though once in a while you won't be able to hit your turn two Ash Zealot, the power of the Loothouse later in the game is definitely worth it. Playing something like Faithless Looting isn't an option: the opportunity cost is an entire card that could be a dude or something to get our dudes through. But Desolate Lighthouse does a very good job of getting through a chunk of lands when you're running out of gas.

Onto the sideboard!

Essence Scatter: Spicy, no? We're very, very scared of Thragtusk. Centaur Healer too, sure, but he dies to Searing Spear. But if somebody resolves a Thragtusk, my life gets a whole lot worse. But who says it has to resolve? Essence Scatter is a good tempo card to stop big blockers like Thragtusk and Olivia. Dare we dream of the day we Essence Scatter a hard-casted Angel of Serenity? We probably durst. But that sure as hell would win you a game. This is still very much a theoretical choice. I haven't gotten to test against too many Selesnya decks, which is a shame because that's decidedly the Bad Matchup. But we'll see!

Archwing Dragon: Yeah, really! You know what this format doesn't have? Good instant-speed removal for big creatures! With all the Dreadbores, Sever the Bloodlineses, and Abrupt Decays  scampering about, life sure looks good for Archie. When you're late in the game against a tap-out control deck that's got you beat, nothing's better than burning them for four every turn.

Forge Devil: Arbor Elf!

I think this deck has a solid plan, and it has an extraordinarily good matchup against zombies. So let me know what you guys think!