Deck Tech: M10 Shenanigans

Hello everyone. Sorry for the lack of post in recent days, but work and a need for studying my German was needed.

Today, we take a look at a creatureless monoblack deck. From what I can tell this deck can cause some serious pain. This deck utilizes cards from the newly released M10, and WOW. Minor testing of the deck showed that it can rip your opponent a new one before they even feel it. Let's take a look.

Deck Tech: The Ripper

Lands

• 24x Swamp

Instants

• 4x Doomblade
• 4x Unmake

Sorcery

• 4x Sign in Blood
• 4x Infest
• 4x Tendrils of Corruption
• 4x Corrupt
• 2x Consume Spirit
• 2x Profane Command
• 2x Mind Shatter
• 2x Incremental Blight

Enchantments

• 4x Sanguine Bond

Sideboard

• 4x Duress
• 2x Incremental Blight
• 1x Mind Shatter
• 3x Haunting Echos
• 3x Deathmark
• 2x Trip Noose

I have not Personally taken this deck on a spin around the FNM, but a few others have. Lets look at a round by round summary of this deck's time at FNM.

FNM - Round 1

Matchup: Honor of the Pure Kithkin

Not a whole lot to say about this one, honestly. Duress into Sign In blood into Infest pretty much sealed the deal. A few spot removal spells, Sanguine Bond and a Corrupt later it was lights out, and the next game proceeded to play out exactly the same way.

FNM - Round 2

Matchup: RDW (Red Deck Wins)

Cakes and pies. Tendrils of Corruption is definately MVP in this match. Use spot removal on Ball Lightning and Tendrils of Corruption a couple of things and you're golden. Wish I could say a bit more about this matchup but that pretty much sums it up.

FNM - Round 3

Matchup: Honor of the Pure Kithkin

Game one he got an insanely agressive start with two Goldmeadow Stalwarts and Burrenton Forge-Tenders. Its just too bad that they die to infest, and over comitting is bad. After wiping his board, I Mind Shattered away what remained of his hand. It was good game after a couple of Sanguine Bond powered Corrupts.

Game two was horrible for me. White Knight came in from the sideboard and he saw two of them, which promptly started caving my head in. Finally, after him not drawing an Honor of the Pure and me Sign in Blooding myself nearly to death I managed to infest away his team and stabilise at 4 life. Lucky, indeed.

FNM - Round 4

Matchup: Five Color Bloodbraid

I wish this match were as easy as kithkin. It isn't. Far from it, in fact.

Game One: Stalled on two lands until my fifth turn. Scooped 'em up.

Game Two: A long and drawn out game which would see me Duress him three times and Mind Shatter him twice, yet he still bounced back with only 8 cards left in his library. I think Haunting Echoes would make this matchup a lot more winnable. Don't know what I was thinking not running it in the board, to be honest.

Notably the decklist was slightly different from what is currently posted. The changes feel like the deck should perform better and curve out much nicer. I recommend that you give this deck a test drive. I certainly feel like this deck is work its time.

Until next time, this is Deppe passing the turn

When Giving A Nate Jordan Lemons...

Author - Nathan Jordan

When the good Lord gives you lemons, you make lemonade. And when you open your 3rd pack of M10 and get two Goblin Chieftains in the same one, you start thinking about playing some Goblins. After scrounging around in the Black and Red cards I had, this is what I came up with to take to my local FNM.

Deck Tech: Goblin Renegade

Creatures
2x Wort, Boggart Auntie
3x Siege-Gang Commander
4x Boggart Ram-Gang
4x Goblin Chieftain
4x Mad Auntie
4x Murderous Redcap

Instants
2x Tarfire
2x Magma Spray
4x Flame Javelin
4x Lightning Bolt

Sorceries
1x Banefire
4x Dragon Fodder

Land
1x Auntie's Hovel
1x Dragonskill Summit
3x Veinfire Borderpost
4x Graven Cairns
14x Mountain

Sideboard
1x Magma Spary
2x Goblin Assault
4x Deathmark
4x Doom Blade
4x Goblin Outlander

*Idealy, I want Dragonskull Summit instead of Veinfire Borderpost but the shop I play at was out and I only had the 1 I opened from my box. Also, because of my work schedule, I had no time to run home, which means my sideboard has two Goblin Assaults that I never intended on playing.*

Tonight was a good night for my Goblins. I was 3-1 in Swiss and had a close match in the 1 Top 8 round I played. Here's the quick and dirty of it:

Round 1 - Loss to my job who requires that I work until 7 and the tourney starts @6:30.

Round 2 - Win against RDW.

First game was close. Flame Javelin carried me and the extra draw per turn from Spiteful Visions allowed me to drop more mana and empty my hand to burn him out.

Round 3 - Win against G/W Overrun.

This is when I realized I needed Volcanic Fallout, and bad. Spot removal for Spectral Procession tokens? Lame. I won game 1 narrowly, but sided in Deathmark, Doom Blade, and Goblin Outlanderto lock up game 2.

Round 4 - Win against Boat Brew.

This game was over pretty quick. Killing the mana ramp meant that it took too long for him to get his bigger creatures out and by then there were too many Goblins on the field to deal with. Deathmark and Doomblade to deal with the incoming Burrenton Forge-Tender made this an easy wrap.

Top 8: Round 1

Game 1 - Loss to Honor of the Pure. I ran out of steam in Game 1 and lost to this spirit tokens. This deck was hot and I had a hard time dealing with it. Reinforced Knight of Meadowgrain eats up my Goblins pretty quick.

Game 2 - I came in with the majority of my sideboard again and lulled him into swinging with everything and putting me at two. He made some spirits and passed back. I put down the Outlander, made two Goblins, and doom bladed a spirit and swung in with lots of hasty Goblins for over 20 damage.

Game 3 - I saw my worst enemy, Spectral Procession two times. He swung with one set of 3, tapped two of his Windbrisk Heights to produce another 3 tokens and an Honor of the Pure. Two turns of that kind of abuse and I scooped.

I am relatively happy with my performance but there are some (now) obvious deck tweaks that need to be made:

-3 Veinfire Borderposts
-2 Tarfire
-2 Wort, Boggart Auntie
-2 Mountain

+3 Dragonskull Summit
+2 Magma Spray
+2 Voracious Dragon
+2 Swamp

Lands that come into play tapped are ok for some decks, but with agro like this, a turn without one mana ready for use means you are done for. I found myself wishing I could cast just one more spell but was limited by a borderpost.

Tarfire was meant to be recurring with the help of Wort, Boggart Aunite. This was a good plan, until I realized that I didn’t play her the entire night. Not even once. Not even on my last turn with the game on the board. The reason is that there are too many more relevant things in my hand to play instead. Flame Javelin, Ram-Gang, and Siege-Gang Commander are all more valuable than a 3/3 Fear for 4. Most of what ended up in my graveyard was tokens that got blocked. Mad Auntie does pretty close to the same thing by regenerating the Goblin instead. This allowed me to attack with tokens and regenerate at least one for more mischief next turn. The point is, if I was alive long enough to need to bring things back with Wort, then I was probably already dead.

With a creature slot open, it makes it a no brainer to add in Voracious Dragon. Say I have a Goblin Commander, Mad Auntie, Siege-Gang Commander, and 5 Goblin tokens in play (this is a pretty regular look for my board). When Voracious gobbles them all up with Devour, your opponent takes 16 damage! If you haven’t dealt at least 4 damage, or if they have been gaining enough life to stay alive, a 12/12 Flying Dragon should do the trick.

Such a low number of Swamps in for Mountains seems trivial, until I ended up with no way to make the black mana that I desperately needed. 2 Swamps ensures that you will still be able to cast red heavy spells like Flame Javelin and Goblin Commander turn 3 while still allowing you to go and find Swamps off of a Path to Exile.

The change to the sideboard is:
-2 Goblin Assault
-1 Magma Spray to the Main Deck
+3 Volcanic Fallout

An extra Goblin every turn that has haste is great, but not so much if they cause all your other creatures to run into a superior enemy. Fallout will only wipe your board if you don’t have some sort of lord support. I would recommend only using it when absolutely necessary because the consequences of clearing your own board are just as bad as if you had devoured them all with Voracious Dragon.

M10 gave us some quality Goblins to work with, and I’m putting them to good use. I’ll have another match report for you next week where B/R Goblins 2.0 will face my local meta-game once again.

Until next time Magic players, this is Nate signing off.

The Magic Show with Evan Erwin

Rules Changes - What Does This Mean???

With the announcement of M10 came some rule changes. Today, I would like to discuss some of these changes so that players can understand them a bit better.

Simultaneous Mulligans

Was this rule ever really enforced? Yeah, at big time tournaments yes, but other than that? At the last FNM I went to I don't remember them actually enforcing it. So there is not really any big change there.

Term Changes

This change has no affect on game play at all. Only renaming areas to be more flavorful. And what is more flavorful than naming it what actually happens in that zone? Battling happens on the battlefield. So Awesome.

Also, it does make it a bit less confusing when you say "Creature enters the battlefield" instead of "Creature comes into play".

The other zone name change was "Removed from Game Zone" to "Exiled Zone". Not only did it receive a cool name, it shortens up lengthy lines of text. You can think of it as a pseudo keyword. "Exile target creature" I love this name change. The only problem is that a handful of cards became weaker. The Wish cycle can no longer grab cards from the Exiled Zone because they are still in play. Not really a big deal. We will see what the reaction is to this change in the upcoming months.

Another term change is "Playing a spell". We are casting spells and playing lands once again. This is a change that should not have changed back in 6th Edition. Makes more logical sense to cast a spell if your the planeswalker in this fantasy world. More flavor is a good flavor. Yum!

Along with this we are activating activated abilities. I think that makes more sense, but that's just me.

Lastly, we have the End of Turn Step turning into the End Step. This step is suppose to rid us of confusion. When does this actually end? Cards like Ball Lightning will now read, "At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice Ball Lightning." This change makes the step feel more like the upkeep. You know when to react to abilities and when things happen.

Mana Burn

Oh no, they got rid of mana burn. Yes, they got rid of mana burn. In my opinion, they made the game lose a bit of flavor here. You can picture it. A planeswalker tapping all the land for thier mana, but he taps a bit too much. He cast his spell and then what? Well, in fantasy reality, there would be so much energy still around that it would have to go somewhere, and that would be damaging the planeswalker for his foolishness. Now, that leftover mana just goes poof and is gone.

On the game side, mana burn does not account for alot of damage in any game. Experienced players know how to tap and get the right amount of mana of the desired kinds. Beginners will learn how to manage their resources rather fast. It wasn't until a year after I started playing Magic, that I learned of mana burn, but at that time I still didn't tap and create mana I didn't need. This shouldn't really have any affect on game play at all.

Along with this, mana pools empty after each step. Not a big deal.

Token Ownership

Not much to say here, only that the Hunted creature cycle from Ravnica become weaker in the Warp Worlds deck. Whoopi! Currently there are no cards in standard that gives your opponent a token when you cast the spell.

Combat Damage

Combat damage does not use the stack. Now this change is a little hard to see at first, but what does it really affect? Mogg Fanatic, Dauntless Escort, ... Indeed these cards do get weaker because you can't kill something with them on there way out. Or cards like Boomerang, that can bounce your creatures to safety. Hard to swallow, but one can get over it. I have read many forums on how this is the single change that will kill Magic. Why? "Because that is part of the game that is the most complex, now we have YuGiOh-Magic." First, Magic has far more complexity than its competitors will ever have. Second, Magic has been around for 15+ years. If the game has been going this long, Wizards is doing something right. Third, this makes games more interesting. You have to think of a different strategy to get the job done. If that is too complex for you, you shouldn't be playing this game.

Blocking Rules

To be blantantly honest, this made combat a lot more confusing. Now when your creature is blcoked you have to 'trample' over to put damage on them. This made a lot of mass wipe cards weaker. But as I said before, allows you to think up different strategies to win.

Keyword Updates

So, with the new blocking rules, deathtouch become very weak. Deathtouch was changed in a way that would allow it to multiple creatures if it could by splitting damage. This change really hasn't affected anything. And I don't recall having to ever having to double regenerate after blocking a creature with deathtouch.

Lifelink on the other hand kinda got the shaft. Longer will your Knight of Meadowgrain get a second instance of lifelink when you attack in with a Rafiq on the board. Kinda sucks, but I can deal with that. Also, lifelink is a static ability. So, you will gain the life right as you deal it. No stack needed here.

Those are just the biggest changes that have happened. For further information, visit the Magic website. These rules were put into affect last Saturday, July 11th. Remember this week, that the new rules are in affect.

Until next time, this is Deppe passing the turn.

The Magic Show with Evan Erwin

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