Dark Ascension Event Decks Feb 24
Hey guys if you have not already checked these event decks they are an incredible buy! Check out the deck lists here! Only $24.99!! More »
Hey guys its that time again! Come in and test that Standard Constructed deck you have been working on! Only $10 to enter and plenty to win! More »
League of Legends Tournament: A Retrospect
So as many of you know, Friendly Fire held a 5v5 League of Legends tournament on Sunday, so I thought I’d update the main site with the results and some info about the tournament, as well as some discussion about what we witnessed.
First off, congratulations to Don’t Dive Us for winning the Grand Prize of $200 cash, $15 Riot Points, the Triumphant Ryze Skin, and the Champion+Skin bundle of an upcoming champion to be determined.
They defeated the no. 3 seed Seal Cub Clubbing Club 2-0 (my team) in an exciting final that involved a godlike Karma, lots of warding, and at least one Baron Steal.
The Seal Cub Clubbing Club receives $15 riot points and $100 cash.
Coming in Third Place was the no. 5 seed Halls of Gaming, who defeated the no. 2 seed Righteous Vindication in a consolation match with dominant performances by Shaco and Shyvana and outstanding coordination and teamwork. They received Friendly Fire Game Center T-Shirts (ironic, I know) and 650 Riot Points.
In 4th place was Righteous Vindication, who had a… bold strategy with Poppy in the jungle. They receive 650 Riot Points as well.
Congratulations to all the teams who won prizes!
We had an awesome time with Snakeplisken shout-casting each match and streaming the tournament on-line, as well as over 20 spectators who just came to watch and win door prizes. Join us on April 14th-15th for our next tournament, which will be the next in a series that will culminate in a HUGE season-ending event to determine the best League team in Connecticut.
Full Bracket: http://challonge.com/ffleaguefeb12
One thing that was pretty clear about the tournament was that the prevailing meta of Bruiser Top, AP Mid, Tanky Jungler, and Ranged AD/Support bottom is still very much alive, as every team used this general composition in each game. The most common pick/ban was Sona, who was picked in 7 of the 9 games played and banned in the other 2. She was picked first by one team or the other in each game she made an appearance, which shows just how valuable Sona is considered to a team compared to other supports. Soraka, Alistar, Janna, and Taric picked up the slack for the non-Sona teams.
The AD carry duties were covered almost exclusively by Ashe (6 picks/2 bans, 83% win ratio) and Caitlyn(5/0, 20%), with Graves winning 1 of the 3 games he was picked and Sivir winning 1 of the 2 games she was picked. Kog’maw made one appearance in bottom lane (he lost) and Corki also made one appearance (he won).
Bruiser duties were covered by a variety of champions, but the most common top lane was Gangplank (4/1, 25%). Shyvana and Wukong both made 2 trips to the top lane, and both won each of their games. Shyvana was banned 4 times after Halls of Gaming decimated the Elitist Nice Guys thanks in large part to a beast-mode Shyvana in the first match of the day.
Mid-lane was shared by a large variety of champions.
Other noteworthy champions include Vladimir (5/2, 60%) and Sejuani (4/0, 25%). Karma was selected for one game in the final match and dominated. The most common bans were Shaco (1/5, 100%), which was justified by the truly dominant performance he put on in the one game he was played, and Kassadin (2/5, 50%), who also carried hard in the first match of the day.
One interesting strategy to note was the 2nd place finishers Seal Cub Clubbing Club sending Gangplank mid and an AP top in 2 of their 4 games played. They successfully bluffed their opponents into difficult match-ups by not revealing their strategy until they showed up to lane. They also tended to invade a lot, often picking up First Blood by waiting in some bushes in the enemy jungle for an unsuspecting opponent to face-check.
Don’t Dive Us, the 1st place team, picked Ashe in every single game and relied on heavy warding and map awareness, as well as outstanding coordination to force favorable team-fights with strong initiators (Ashe, Wukong, Singed).
If you were at the tournament, you know how exciting the matches were, and there were a lot of interesting strategies to discuss, but I’ll wrap it up for now by plugging the next tournament on April 14th-15th. It will be a two-day event and we will allow up to 16 teams to sign up. This time, we will not require the teams to disclose any summoner information, but we will be asking for preregistration fees to guarantee spots. See you all next time!
League of Legends Winter Qualifier in Progress
Hey Guys! We got the stream right here!
Warhammer Mondays
Greetings friends! So we will be doing Warhammer 40k on Mondays. Bring your armies…. If you do not have an army, we have a Orc and Space Marine starter one ready to go. Eventually we will have armies and other Warhammer products for sale in the future. But first we need to get some play tests in and show some of you the ropes! Any questions or concerns should be posted here or simply call up the store and ask for Dan or Jake.
Some ideas we have for the future if this becomes successful:
1. Painting contests: Those with the best painted models will win prizes.
2. Tournaments…BIG ONES
CURSE YOUUUUU!!!
If you grew up in a sensible household, where you were taught that magic isn’t real and Harry Potter is a work of fiction, you would know that “curses” don’t actually work. And if you’ve tried using a Curse card in Magic: The Gathering, it probably did not do much to dissuade you from believing that they don’t work. That’s because they are silly, gimmicky cards that rarely actually affect the board state when you expend the card from your hand. With that knowledge in hand, I decided to construct a dedicated curse deck at FNM last week.
It was bad. However, it wasn’t bad because the mechanic is bad, it was bad because I built it poorly. Considering I tend to avoid “combo” decks in limited, I had a difficult time understanding the type of board state I would need to establish in order to put together my combo, and ended up building a deck with a lot of little creatures and a lot of big creatures, but no middle ground.
Let’s go through my picks in order. If anybody has drafted with me, they know I tend to lean towards taking rares because they are prettier and worth more money. I tend to draft the value cards because I strongly believe that no matter how well I build my deck, poor shuffling can still lose me a match. And if you say, “Maybe it can lose you a game, but not a match!” YOU CLEARLY HAVEN’T MET ME. So I take the valuable cards, hoping superior deck construction and lack of play errors will help me win regardless.
First pack, first pick: Curse of Bloodletting
Now, this card is rather controversial. It is one of those cards that does not immediately affect the game state. As in, you drop it, but it doesn’t give you a creature to swing with nor take out one of your opponent’s creatures. However, if you are running an aggressive deck or have lots of evasion, this card can do a lot of work very fast. Drop it on a turn when your opponent overextends thinking he is safe, and he is all of a sudden taking twice as much damage as he expected to, allowing for a 10 damage Brimstone Volley to potentially steal the game. One thing Curse of Bloodletting does is that it makes your big scary creatures even more lethal. Your opponent will be forced to make unprofitable blocks when this thing is on the board. It also helps your Intimidators and your flying vampires seal the deal a bit quicker. This, on top of making any direct damage spell twice as efficient. I had no problems first picking this enchantment from an otherwise lackluster pack.
First pack, second pick: Stromkirk Captain
There is no controversy about this card: it is strong. I rarely ever commit to an archetype this early, but getting two cards this strong one right after another made me want to go all in vampires. From experience, I’ve found that picking up vampires is not all that difficult because cards like Erdwal Ripper and Nearheath Stalker are not all that high in the pick order for most players. Slap first strike on these creatures and they are legitimately scary, let alone the Anthem they are getting from their captain. While I was inclined to look for some Edward Cullens, I still wanted to keep myself open for other potential strategies. My next few picks ended up being rather easy. I grabbed Tragic Slip pick 3 and a pick 4 Fires of Undeath. I felt like red and black were open based on the other cards I was passing along, which included the aforementioned 4/1 Undying Vampire, which I hoped would wheel, and a Black Cat in addition to the cards that I drafted.
First pack, fifth pick: Fling
This pack posed a bit of difficulty for me. I saw Black Cat, which is always fun to pick up, as well as an Erdwal Ripper, which fit into my theme. Both seemed like decent picks, but the one card that really stood out for me was Curse of Misfortunes. I had seen this card before played in a sealed deck as a second way to get the more specialized version of Furnace of Rath. I considered picking it up, but I came to my senses and realized that it would most likely come back to me 8 picks from now, as it is completely useless in most decks. At the time, I believed I was building a creature oriented deck, and Fling seemed like an excellent choice not only to answer my opponent’s removal with a bit of my own, but also a way to potentially deal double digit damage for 2 mana with my Curse of Bloodletting.
For the rest of my picks, I grabbed a couple vampires, a couple Forge Devils, which struck me as a strong one drop on the draw, and some riff-raff that nobody else wanted. And luckily for me, that riff-raff happened to include Curse of Misfortunes, which I gladly slapped on top of my stack.
Second pack brought a few interesting things. I snatched up Increasing Ambition first pick, as I have had great success with the card in the past. I was passed Flayer of the Hatebound, which I happily grabbed, and then vowed to continue grabbing any Undying creatures when possible. Happily enough, the next pick was just about the most synergistic card I could possibly hope for. Vengeful Vampire not only plays well with my lord, but has Undying to combo with my Flayer, and flies into faces for double damage with my first pick Curse.
I should have been happy. I should have been content with the way my deck was coming together so far. And I was. Very much so. Then I saw it. A card that had not even registered for me before I saw it there: Curse of Thirst.
One could argue that the only way Curse of Thirst would only truly reach its potential is if it were paired with Curse of Misfortunes and Curse of Bloodletting, two cards which I already had in my possession. It was decided; I was building the Curse deck. I’ve built plenty of combo decks in limited before: Necromancer’s Covenant Mill, Burning Vengeance, a somewhat successful Pyromancer Ascension deck in Zendikar (running 5 copies of Spire Barrage), and a few others. I didn’t grab the Curse Curse right then, but I was able to grab it 8 picks later, after loading up with some more removal and control to hopefully play into late-game. Farbog Boneflinger is often a 2 for 1, and Wrack with Madness takes out nearly everything.
At this point, the goal of the deck was to drop Curse of Misfortunes as soon as I could, then search up the Thirst, followed by the Bloodletting in most situations. Barring any sort of intervention, the game would end 3 turns later even if all I did was shore up my defenses. I picked up Curse of the Nightly Hunt and Curse of Oblivion in Innistrad, and had a deadly suite of enchantments to sling around.
So, how did it work out? Quite well, actually. Every game I was able to get out Curse of Misfortunes in a reasonable amount of time, I was quickly able to finish after that. Considering I was running the Flashbacking Tutor, I was consistently able to get it. However, I finished the draft 1-2. Why? Because my deck was bad. The deck being bad had nothing to do with my combo, and everything to do with having a TERRIBLE curve. I had too many high-costing creatures and not enough 3-4 drops for mid-game tempo and defense. Looking back, I mistakenly passed on two Warden of the Walls, which would have helped this deck tremendously. Black Cat was still a great card every time I cast it, but I was unable to ever effectively get out my Vampire lord with a couple Vampires.
In retrospect, it was unfortunate that I drafted the vampire lord, as the vampire theme was distracting me from building a proper deck to take advantage of the more powerful Curse strategy. Or maybe the curse strategy was distracting me from the more powerful vampire aggro strategy. Either way, my deck had bombs and powerful early game beaters to take over games, but I was consistently out-tempoed by my opponents. My deck was only two colors, which is the first time I haven’t splashed a third color in quite some time, and also my worst finish in that same amount of time.
All in all, I guess the point I am trying to make is: building combo decks can be fun and exciting, but there is very little room for error when constructing them. If your deck is lackluster at any point in the game before you assemble your combo, you are going to have trouble staying alive long enough to win. Also: shuffle… a lot.
Let’s Talk Leeeeeague!
Hello internet people, this is Sam again. Except this time I’m talking about COMPUTER GAMES! League of Legends is a fun game, but a lot of people have no idea what they are doing and it isn’t fun to have to queue with those people.
So here are some basics for new players that want to get better fast in order to not feed hard when they queue with people at the store. Even if you are an experienced player, these are still good rules to follow, especially #2.
1) Play support – In most cases, you will be relegated to the support role because nobody will trust you to go anywhere else. But here’s the good news: support is one of the most fun positions to play. No, you won’t get a ton of kills and you won’t get godly amounts of ap/ad, but you get to babysit somebody. Remember babysitting? If you are a guy, probably not, but for those of us that had the pleasure of looking after small children, I can assure you that supporting FFDeek as the ad is JUST LIKE THAT!
Good supports to learn that are also easy to play: Sona, Soraka, Alistar. These champs all have sustain, which allows you to stay in lane longer. Essentially, as these champs, you will look at your enemies menacingly, then keep your supportee at full health all the time. Also, DON’T ATTACK CREEPS. Your job as the support is to get your ranged carry fed, so let them kill ALL the creeps.
2) DON’T CHASE – Because you aren’t going to catch them, and you are going to die in the process.
3) Buy wards – If all you do all game is just ward up the necessary places, you will be a positive contributing factor to the team.
4) Listen to your teammates – Do what they say. If they are wrong, you get to blame them! If you don’t do what they ask you to do, and you lose, they will blame you. If you do what they ask you to do, and you lose anyway, then you get to watch them awkwardly try to explain what else you did wrong! If you do what they ask, and you win? High-fives and bro-fists all around!
5) Understand Team Composition – If you have no idea what the second two words of that statement mean when put together, then pick the champion you want to play, and let everybody else worry about it. Do not, under any circumstances, wait for everybody else to pick before you choose your champion when you don’t actually know what role is needed or have the variety of champions necessary to fill every possible role. If you don’t know what champion you should pick, see rule #1.
6) Play defensively – Map awareness is key. If there is a pleasant chiming in your ears, that means somebody is furiously pinging the mini-map, and you need to take a glance to see if it is something you can help with. Also, taking a quick look at your mini-map every few seconds is important to make sure all the red guys are where they are supposed to be and one isn’t taking you from behind. Wards are useless if you never look to see if anybody is near them.
So, follow those tactics, and you will be playing at a higher level in no time! Or, you will be able to just blend into a higher level game.
Thought Scour? Targeting me? Why thank you, kind sir.
There is one very legitimate reason for you to read this article weekly if you draft at Friendly Fire: I am very obviously revealing how highly I value certain cards, and you can use this information against me. Whether or not you think you need this advantage is up to you.
This article will be dedicated entirely to the applications of cards for LIMITED in the current format. I may pontificate once in a while on the constructed applications of certain cards. Prerelease was this weekend, I did two sealed and one draft. I can say, without a doubt, that Undying is a very powerful mechanic. It impresses me the most out of all the new keywords that have come out. Most of the creatures with undying are reasonably cost as they are, but add in the fact that you get a two for one, and it gets BIGGER, and you’ve got the recipe for success. To preemptively clear up any confusion, Grafdigger’s Cage turns off Undying (this situation came up more often than expected). Another note on Undying: Red, Blue, Green, and Black all have creatures with undying, so you will reasonably be playing against somebody that has the potential to play a card with Undying. Having said that, Hunger of the Howlpack actually works as effective removal for an Undying creature that is about to die, or to directly counter Undying Evil. But everybody already knows that, cuz its duh…
The strongest colors appear to be Black and Green. Young Wolf is potentially the best one-drop in Dark Ascension. Or you could argue that Wolfbitten Captive is the best one-drop in Dark Ascension. Either way, if you drop a forest and then play one of those cards, it will likely derail your opponent’s happiness. However, small creatures, while great for putting pressure, are not the backbone of limited. It’s the dinosaurs.
I was thoroughly impressed by Ghoultree. An 8 cost 10/10 that reasonably can come out on turn 5 or even 4 if you have a good way to mill yourself. Tracker’s Instincts is as good, if not better, than Mulch from Innistrad for a scry type effect that also fills up your ‘yard. And you can do it again? For 2 and a Blue? And you were running Blue anyway? OF COURSE YOU WERE! Because you are a good player and you know that Green and Blue are best buds. Graveyard-centric strategies are still boss. Milling yourself is ALWAYS the correct decision unless you are playing a dedicated mill deck.
Green got a few other great utility cards as well, including Dawntreader Elk. Grizzly Bear has always been playable, but he’s never had the ability to ramp/fix your mana, while activating morbid at the same time. Then there is Feed the Pack. This card was passed to me 8th pick at the draft on Friday, which means every single person in that pod looked at it, said “Meh”, and passed it along. This card can win you the game outright. I dropped it turn 5 thanks to Dawntreader ramp, Sacrificed my 5/5 Festerhide Boar, and put 5 2/2 wolves on the field. That’s kind of good. Then the next turn, I dropped Relentless Skaabs, saced it at end of turn, put 4 more wolves on the field while making my Skaabs bigger. When all was said and done, I swung at my opponent with 14 2/2 wolves for the victory. Seems okay. And this happened every time I was able to get this bonkers enchantment in play. Since most people don’t run enchantment hate, I would drop it and be all like, “whats up?” and they’d be all like “FUUUUUU”. Then there is the Predator Ooze, that’s pretty self-explanatory. Vorapede is a beatstick as well. Not to mention, Wild Hunger is an excellent combat trick and a potential game-winner.
On to the baller new black cards. Tragic Slip may be the best new control card in the set. It takes out nearly everything, even indestructibles, for one black mana. Black also received Death’s Caress. Any card that says “Destroy Target Creature” without any conditions or drawbacks is strong, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. And then there’s Black Cat. Not only does it potentially get rid of the scariest card in their deck, it’s a cutie pie. Then there is Gruesome Discovery. In a controlling deck, this card can be a game-winner. Blow your wad on their medium-range beaters, then shatter their dreams… Then there is the meh version of Skinrender, Farbog Boneflinger, which is still a 2 for 1 3 times out of 4. And then there’s Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. Do I really even… no, I don’t.
Let’s get to the lords. The Blue/White Drogskol Captain and the Black/Blue Diregraf Captain are clearly the strongest, both because they are the easier tribes to draft and their abilities are strong. In practice, building a dedicated vampire deck can be difficult, and the werewolf deck has several drawbacks not related to the tribe. As for the spirit deck, it’s still ridonkulous. There’s a new Midnight Haunting, Lingering Souls, which is bonkers powerful, and a bunch more spirits. If you can snatch up one of these captains in the first pack, it would probably be a good idea to go into these colors. But if you pop Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, you should probably go those colors. Also, if you pull something like this, you may be too excited not to let everybody know, but try not to give it away. If people know you pulled a bomb rare like that that you’ll want to build your deck around, they will try to cut you off from those particular colors. So just stay calm.
All in all, Blue-Green-Black mill yourself is, in my opinion, still the strongest archetype for draft. It has received quite a few new scary cards, notably the Zombie Tree, Vorapede, which haunts my nightmares, Geralf’s Mindcrusher, Havengul Lich, and other giant scary rares, and you don’t need me to tell you which of these cards are strong and should be snatched immediately and decks built around them. But, more reasonably, you should be able to pop Tracker’s Instincts, Reap the Seagraf, Dawntreader Elk, Grim Flowering, Thought Scour (another dream twist ain’t half bad), and even Mystic Retrieval. Milling yourself is still a good idea.
A New Challenger Approaches…
Ahoy,
This page is made up entirely of posts from my brother so far. And like anything that he’s ever done since we were children, I need to try to steal his thunder. So it has come to pass that I will be a consistent contributor to Friendly Fire Game Center’s website. Also, there is a spell check feature for posting, which explains why Deek’s posts have been almost entirely devoid of spelling errors. I knew foul play was afoot.
For those who do not know me, I attend Friday Night Magic every week, as a rules adviser/free win for my opponents. I also maintain and update the Magic leaderboard (more on that later; a preemptive congratulations to James P, who will likely become the reigning Magic champion for this next set). You might possibly know me as the person who comes in at various times on random weekdays to yell loudly and get in pointless arguments with the store owner (a visual representation).
This column will be dedicated to some of my favorite things and you will read it and you will like it, okay? For the foreseeable future, I will be devoting this space to discussing Magic LIMITED strategies (draft/sealed) as well as competitive League of Legends, where my brother and I will be theory-crafting possible meta changes and synergistic strategies/lane comps. I will update it twice a week, with Magic discussion on Mondays (to preempt MTG’s Steve Sadin) and League discussion on Tuesdays (following my day off from work, in which I buy a 24-hour IP boost and rock out).
Now I know what you’re thinking, or at least I’m telling you what you SHOULD be thinking: what qualifies this guy to tell me anything about anything? Well, nothing, really. Everything I say here will be my own personal opinion and in no way should be taken as representative of a consensus among high level players, unless, of course, it is to be used to justify your position in an argument against my brother. In such cases, he was probably wrong anyway. Having said that, my credentials include being the 3 time winner of the Magic Leaderboard for limited events (Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, Magic 2012) and having played League of Legends consistently since beta. I have a rather unimpressive Elo personally (summoner name: Samwow), but I have played matches with and against high level players such as Hotshotgg (fed so hard), Elementz (tryhard), L0CUST (tryhard), and Phreak (trololol), among many others.
So if you foresee yourself being interested in listening to me blather on about various things and passive-aggressively undermining my brother, check back next week and I will post my first columns. But if you don’t think I’m particularly funny or interesting, I understand…
Necrotic Summoning
Hey guys, if you look back to my article a week or so ago Dark Ascension Spoilers I was going on about the awesome synergy between Havengul Lich and Necrotic Ooze. Now at the time I had a great little “Suicide Summoning” deck that mixed Bloodgift Demon, Solemn Simulacrum, and Perilous Myr into I neat little bundle. It preformed pretty well against many of the archetypal decks that were coming to our Saturday Standard Series and our $3 at 3 Friday Standard, which by the way will resume after pre-release and release weekends are done, so please stop in and test your new creations.
But it has come to my attention that these decks should be one and the same! This was mentioned by Ron Lamonica, a long time comer to our Friday Night Magic’s, and was supported by an article I read on Daily MTG. So I went to work piecing these bad boys together.
There are key things I wanted to keep from both decks. From my Necrotic Ooze deck I wanted the Necrotic Ooze – Civilized Scholar engine. For those of you who don’t see it right away, the scholars ability being used by my ooze causes Necrotic Ooze to untap each time I decide to ditch a creature, seeing as there is flip side to Necrotic Ooze, he just simply untaps, allowing me to chain gun creatures into my graveyard. The objective of the deck was to fill my graveyard with tons of activated abilities to try and combo off a win. Some of the combos included Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Bloodline Keeper, and Mirror-Mad Phantasm and Laboratory Maniac. I threw Havengul Lich in there to act as my 5-8 Necrotic Oozes.
From my “Suicide Summoning” deck I wanted my Heartless Summoning and Perilous Myr and all the cards that help me to gain card advantage, Bloodgift Demon, Phyrexian Rager and, Solemn Simulacrum. The win condition for this deck was to play monster creatures for CHEAP. This included Wurmcoil Engine, Massacre Wurm, and the real bomb of the deck Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. I think I’ll keep the Massacre Wurm looking at the inevitable token decks I will face, and possibly a couple Wurmcoil Engine for making up any life gaps. In place of Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite I think I’ll work around a one-of Consecrated Sphinx since we will be in blue this time around.
So lets get straight the the decklist:
"Necrotic Summoning"
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So right of the bat, you probably noticed almost HALF my deck is creatures. The reasoning behind this is we don’t want too many non creature spells to gunk of the works of our Scholar-Ooze combo. Second thing you might notice is that long list of one-ofs. This is banking on the fact that we can mill most of our library away in search of direct answers. The third thing you might notice is the lack of disruption. What our deck wants to do is go off, and go off fast, it has very few targeted ways to stop it besides the graveyard hate such as Grafdigger’s Cage and Nihil Spellbomb, for this scenario we have a side board to deal with it. So your going to be focused on doing what your doing and hope your alive turn 4-5 when this deck should kick into over drive and you should have a damn good hold on the game.
I will be play testing this deck this Thursday and Friday at the shop along with some other deck ideas. Come on down and bring your newest creation. Proxies are ENCOURAGED!
And I hope to see you all at the Dark Ascension Pre-Release events this weekend, you’ve got 4 to choose from, or heck you can do all 4! Find the details here. Plus, we are still taking pre-orders on booster boxes, we are out of the $90 boxes but you can still grab them for $100 plus tax and still be guaranteed a buy-a-box promotional Gravecrawler for the next 10 Pre-Orders! Do not hesitate!
As always please leave comments below or come into the store and have a talk!
Black is Back!
Hey just installed a new deck-list viewer. Just testing it out with the latest theory build for my take on the new Dark Ascension Mono-black Deck.
"Mono-Black Aggro"
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A quick explanation of what’s going on here. So Phyrexian Obliterator just got some new friends. Namely Gravecrawler and Geralf’s Messenger. I believe and I’m sure there are many who might agree with me that this brings the mono-black aggro deck to competitive standard constructed status. What I have here is just a first draft, no play testing has been done just playing the scenarios out in my head.
One of the more interesting inclusions I think I added was Altar’s Reap. This card has been overlooked for some time but I think it is a great fit for this deck. This card has not one but two synergies with cards in this deck. Suddenly its turn 4 or 5 and your Gravecrawler is sitting there unused, you opponent has managed to put out a toughness 3 creature by now, “poop”, and you can’t profitably swing in. It’s k, I’ve got just the thing! An instant speed draw effect that at this point has zero negative effect minus its 2 mana cost. What’s more is that I can still bring that Gravecrawler back when I can make a profitable swing later on. The other synergy being to trigger Geralf’s Messenger‘s Undying effect to to hit my opponent over the head for another 2 and swing for 4 the following turn, imagine playing this on your opponent’s endstep, BOY what a surprise!
I am borrowing another Dark Ascension card here. Tragic Slip is great new tool for black removal. It may not have the power to say remove a meaty guy from combat but what it does have is the ability to trade creatures no matter what the scale. Also it does have the bonus effect of taking on that pesky 1 toughness Inkmoth Nexus or that pre transformed Delver of Secrets. If you block any big baddy swingin in at you with you Diregraf Ghoul or you trade your Gravecrawler during an attack, suddenly you have your pick of the litter, cause -13/-13 takes out pretty much everything, including that pesky indestructible ooze.
The last little Dan Keener touch I added to this deck was a bit of recursion. It’s not enough to throw these Undying zombies at my opponent and loom with the threat of Phyrexian Obliterator or Bloodline Keeper. I have to bring these suckers back just to frustrate you to no end. So of course I tossed in some Unburial Rites and my favorite one-of Sheoldred, Whispering One. Suck on that = P
As always tell me what you think. Is it missing anything? Does something not belong?
P.S. – Just thought of some possible inclusions that will definitely get play tested. Lashwrithe and Inquisitor’s Flail
Tribes on the Rise
Hey guys! So I woke up today and, as I’ve done every morning for the past week, I log on to MTGSalvation.com to check out any new spoilers that might have been revealed. And to my surprise I found a new Vampire general looking back at me, Stromkirk Captain. This marks the third new Tribal general they’ve revealed with this new set.
Some back story. I’ve been following competitive standard since Lorawyn was still legal. Back in those days tribes were a big part of that block.Two of the top decks during that year were Ferries and Kithkin, Ferries being especially prevalent. Then again during Zendikar while Vampire Noctornous was still standard another big finisher was Mono Black Vampires and after that, during early Scars, it was all about Keldatha rebirth Goblins.
In this up and coming competitive standard I think we shall see a resurgence of Vampires. Werewolves and Humans will get a chance to prove themselves worth tribes in the larger scope of Magic history. Dark Ascension seems be carrying a lot of anti-Human sentiment but doesn’t seem to throw anything directly into the cogs to muck up a fairly strong deck and adds the very interesting keyword Final Hour, as can be demonstrated on Humans’ new general, Thraben Doomsayer. Werewolves seem to be getting a solution to a problem they’ve been facing in the current standard, the form of Immerwolf.
Dark Ascension also seems to make room for these tribal archetypes by introducing Grafdigger’s Cage. This card HURTS the current blue black control and most other decks running Snapcaster Mage and the like. This leaves more room for full on aggro decks to move their way into competitive play. The tempo of these tribal decks can most definitely compete with with the current red-blue aggro decks and mono-red burn beat downs.
I have yet to play test any of these new cards or theory craft any full deck lists for these yet but I assure you by next week I will have some interesting deck lists to put forth for you guys.
Please comment below if you have an opinion as to which tribe will make it to the front of the pack. ( see what I did there )