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Published by Books Electric Publishing
Contents copyrighted 1996 by Books Electric Publishing
Enough bureaucratic stuff, get to the contents already!
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Spotlight on ... Land Destruction
Card to Watch for ... Ray of Command + CORRECTION!
Deck of the Fortnight ... A Lion's Eye Diamond Deck??
Question ... Who Goes First?
Tidbits of Wisdom ... Some Comments on Creatures, Part 2.
Trade/Combat Zone and Marketplace ... Another Trader's Tale.
Feedback ... What do you want?
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Spotlight on Land Destruction
Land destruction is the most annoying (hence, effective) tactic in Type II tournament play, and the reason is simple--the strategem of "Prevent OP from doing anything" always wins games when it works. Other strategies, such as "Rip all cards out of OPs hand" can certainly win games, but it is quite possible to lose to an OP with no cards in his hand, even when multiple Racks are played on him. Mercifully, the restriction of Strip Mine, Balance, Black Vice, and Zuran Orb (isn't it fascinating how many restricted cards were exploited by land destroyers?) have made this strategy less dominating, despite the restriction of cards which counter land destroying policies (Ivory Tower and Land Tax). Let's see what's the best in each color:
In Black, Choking Sands will quickly replace Icequake as a land destroyer--the ability to generate TWO effects (damage and land destruction) more than offsets the inability to destroy swamps, as swamps are always the last target for such spells anyway. Why? The big reason is Dark Ritual, which allows a Black player to accomplish something on the same turn he lays down a swamp. Even though mono-Black decks exist in Type II, they still commonly feature a few non-basic, game-winning, lands, making Choking Sands a difficult card to hold useless in your hand.
Blue has practically nothing to destroy lands. Political Trickery, combined with Zuran Orb (or a sacrificing land) can allow you to get OP's land; just be sure to sacrifice the land you control in response to the casting of the spell.; multi-targeted spells only fizzle if ALL their targets become invalid, so this is one way to "destroy" OPs land. For a really wacky combo, try this with Orcish Mine. (Watchout on this interpretation--some judges believe these swapping spells no longer work if even one of the targets becomes invalid, despite p34 of the Mirage rulebook; although the sacrificeable lands might not be of much use to OP in any event). Volcanic Eruption is nice spell, but its massive mana requirement makes it a little unwieldy for use early in the game, where destroying mana is MUCH more critical.
Green is even worse off than Blue, although it does have the equally limited but optimally effective Tsunami--if this spell is cast and not countered, it usually spells the end of the game for the Blue player. "Not Countered" is a big thing to ask. Natural Balance might become a land destroyer, although this card really needs a combo (like Zuran Orb) or luck for it to really pay off.
Red has the most variety of land destruction options. Stone Rain is a nice, easy to cast card, whose value sometimes drops off the chart in the late game, where nuking a land might accomplish nothing (note how Choking Sands still generates a game winning effect late in the game). Pillage has become the popular answer to Rain, even though it sacrifices some of its early game usability (having at least 2 of your first 3 mana being Red is much less likely than having at least 1) to get its wider choice of effects. Jokulhaups is probably the best of the lot, as its massive destruction capability is not too highly priced to be cast in a typical game.
White, as usual, has the best card type, in this case land destroyers, Armageddon. Only 4 mana, only one of which needs to be white, gives a player with this spell the ability to prevent most spellcasting for the next 2-10 turns. While this is only useful if the Armageddoneer has a creature advantage, this isn't all that hard to achieve (especially with Green creatures, which have more bang for the buck when it comes to mana cost), since the advantage only needs to exist for one turn, long enough to cast Armageddon. Rumor has it that this spell will not be in 5th Edition (yes, someday White won't be the most destructive color around...). Don't get me started on Balance.
Regardless of what spells you are using, Land Destruction matters most in the earliest part of the game--it does little good to destroy that second plain after OP has summoned his Serra Angel. With the removal of land destruction spells has come refinement of the tactics; land destroyers now generally seek to destroy all producers of one color of mana (typically Blue,which has more doublemana type spells than other colors) rather than just blast every land in play. Miser's Cage is a mediocre substitute for the Black Vice--it still generates a game-winning effect for no mana (guaranteeing it a tournament presence), but at a cost of 3 mana, which gives OP enough time to maybe cast a spell or two before taking damage from it.
Further weakening Land Destruction as a tactic are all the new Diamonds; combine these with Felwar Stones and you have a deck that only needs 2 mana to get rolling. But, that "two mana to get started" is the rub; a land destruction deck will always be nigh guaranteed to win against an OP who gets very little mana on the draw, and until the rules of Magic are changed so much that getting "mana screwed" won't determine the outcome of the game (the mulligan rule helps, but not enough, as getting one land is a near certain loss as well), Land Destruction will always be a viable strategy.
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Card to Watch for ... Ray of Command
Not many people use Ray of Command, since, for an only slightly harder casting cost, they could get the doublemana Control Magic, an enchantment with a much greater effect.
On paper, this is certainly true, but very, very, few tournament quality decks are vulnerable to Control Magic, and many such decks are susceptible to Ray of Command. Most people clumsily use Ray of Command to take OP's best creature and smack him with it. This is nice, and can even win the game every once in a while, but a much more sinister use is to cast it when OP elects to attack you with at least one creature, and he has 2 or more creatures in his control. Cast the Ray, and use one of his creatures to block the other; with any luck at all you'll achieve the 2 for 1 card deal that wins games, placing two of his creatures in the GY while using only one of your spells. This is one of the few Blue spells that reliably can put a creature in the GY.
Why is this more of a threat than it used to be? Well, a few months ago, every deck had 4 Strip Mines in it--a no brainer card that was responsible for many a victory. A no-brainer substitute for the Mine is Mishra's Factory. Woe to the OP who attacks with two Mishras! Not only will you kill two of his cards, they will be lands, which can set OP back critically. After the devasting block, see if you can sacrifice a Mishra to Zuran for enough bonus nachos to choke a cow. If you're gonna use Mishra's, watch out for this card, and if you're playing Blue, seriously consider having this in your deck.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> OOPS!
Correction: The previous issue, we claimed that you could sacrifice a creature to the Phyrexian Vault after it has received fatal combat damage. This is WRONG! You still can only use damage prevention effects after assigning combat damage, and the Vault is not a damage prevention effect. The new rules make it a bit easier to sacrifice a creature to Goblin Chirurgeon and the Mirage version of Circle of Protection.
Thanks to those discerning souls who pointed this out.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Deck of the Fortnight... Lion's Eye Diamond and a Trash Ca--er, Gustha's Sceptre
Lands: 14 Swamps, 4 Plains, 1 Strip Mine
Creatures:
4 Ashen Ghouls
2 Brass Men
3 Insidious Bookworms
4 Nether Shadows
3 Soldevi Sentries
4 Vampire Bats
Enchantments:
2 Dystopia
Artifacts:
1 Despotic Sceptre
2 Gustha's Sceptres
4 Jeweled Amulets
2 Lion's Eye Diamonds (just barely qualifies this as a Lion's Eye Diamond deck--any less and its a Zuran Orb deck!)
1 The Rack
4 Urza's Baubles
1 Zuran Orb
Non-Permanents:
1 Balance
1 Howl From Beyond
2 Pox
(no sideboard, this deck is for amusement purposes only.)
Ok, the Lion's Eye Diamond is no "diamond in the rough", as they say, but if you take it home and polish it up a bit, it will make a fine rhinestone, sorta. Here's a subtle deck that can overwhelm OP if he isn't paying attention, or gets distracted by glitter from the Lion's Eye.
The idea is simple: get 4 Nether Shadows or Ashen Ghouls in your GY, and then use their recycling power to keep them in play until OP has no choice but to die. On the first turn, you should be able to throw down lots of junk, and hopefully a Lion's Eye Diamond is in the pile. During your upkeep on the second turn, you can activate the Lion's Eye to empty your hand. The mana from the Eye can be used to retrieve a Ghoul, Pump a Bat, or load an Amulet, giving you at least one way to prevent adding the injury of mana burn to the insult of using a Lion's Eye Diamond. That's the basics, let's talk about the finer points:
This deck fears Swords to Plowshares, so it has a goodly number of creatures that might draw such a card. In addition to the obvious targets of Shadows and Ghouls we have the underused Soldevi Sentry and Insidious Bookworms, both strong candidates for farming school (the Despotic Sceptre is also included as a counter to the Swords; the best way to see how useful this tactic is, is to play with it a few times). The Vampire Bats are one of the very few creatures capable of dealing 2 points of damage on the second turn of the game (Savannah Lions top the short list...White does it better, of course). The Brass Man is the toughest 1-mana non-wall there is, which generally makes him unblockable until the third turn of the game. That's all there really is to say about the creatures.
Dystopia is great little enchantment, giving this deck a way to deal with Protection from Black and Regeneration (a common Green element), in addition to a variety of other Green/White problems. As this deck seeks a rapid victory, you'll find the upkeep of life to be small price to pay for preventing OP from summoning permanents for a few turns.
Obviously, Gustha's Scepter is there to combine with Lion's Eye, and this is also what the Jeweled Amulets do as well. Urza's Bauble is an underrated card--note how you can use it to "hide" a card from the debilititating Diamond drawback. The cataclysmically underrated Bauble makes great sense in this deck, even without the Diamond, as you really want to whip through your deck as fast as you can to get to those recycling creatures. I'll miss the Bauble if it leaves Type II. The Rack is for punishment value, see the next paragraph for how this artifact makes it into the deck.
Topping the list of non-permanents is Balance; if you're gonna nail yourself with the Lion's Eye, make OP feel your pain. Howl From Beyond has a good deal of surprise value--an unblocked Nether Shadow can be just devastating. Pox is a massively underrated card--note how this deck's reliance upon artifacts and creatures in the graveyard makes it most resistant to the Pox. Multiple Poxes and Balances make it difficult for OP to keep cards in his hand, making The Rack a surprisingly effective game winning card, even in a deck without Hymn to Tourach.
I'm not saying this one will make the world championships, but I've been asked numerous times if there is ANY way to make the Lion's Eye Diamond work. This deck, even with the horrible premise of "must use Lion's Eye Diamond" has enough mutually beneficial cards (how many combos/interrelationships can YOU find in this deck?) that it is capable of winning even when it uses the Lion's Eye Diamond. Put it together (there aren't that many rares in this deck) and see for yourself.
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Question ...
Sometimes I get the choice of going first, and not drawing, or going second and getting to draw. How do I decide?
This is a tough one. Some judges don't let you look at your hand before deciding if you want to go first. Let's suppose your judge lets you look before you decide.
Getting extra cards early in the game isn't so great (well, not as great as it is later in the game...), since at this stage, the real restriction on what you can do is mana, not cards. So, if you look at your hand, and see that that you have plenty of mana, and can cast something immediately, going first is a viable option. On the other hand, if you're not doing anything on the first turn besides laying land (or if you have very little land in your draw), then you most certainly want that "extra" card--you need to get into a position of being able to do something as soon as possible. This is just a rough guideline, of course.
If the judge won't let you look, then there isn't much you can do except keep in mind the more offensive your deck is, the more you want to go first, even at the cost of a card. "Fast" decks typically beat OP with 5 or more cards in his hand. If your deck is defensive, then going second is generally the wiser call.
Got Questions? Reply to this e-mail address, and we'll see what we can do.
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Tidbits of Wisdom ... Some More Comments on Creatures (excerpted from Advanced Magic, by Rick Moscatello), Part 2
(the previous commentary discussed the relative benefits of using creatures of various mana costs...)
In all cases with creature decks, you will eventually meet a deck with creatures of similar power to your own. In this case, a deadlock often occurs, with each player trying to get such a creature superiority that he can attack and, even considering the considerable advantage the defender has, do fatal damage to his foe. Hoping to merely draw more creatures than your opponent (i.e., "get lucky") is not a tournament move--a creature deck should have a decisive way to break these sort of deadlocks, by either having a way of attacking/dealing damage unimpeded (via landwalkers, Dwarven Warriors, Tims, or one of a few artifacts), or more reliably, having a few cards that obliterate all creatures in play (Wrath of God, or even Lure)--by knowing that everything will soon be destroyed, you hold your extra creatures in hand. Quite often, an aggressive opponent will continue to lay creatures turn after turn in the hopes of gaining superiority. Once you have a few good creatures in hand, and you've destroyed everything in play, those extra cards will lead you to glory!
One heuristic to determine a creature's effectiveness is take its power and divide by the amount of mana needed to cast it. While hardly a perfect rule, one can't help but notice that creatures with P/M (Power/Mana) ratio of 2 have a high market value, and make it into many tournament decks (eg, Ball Lightning, a 6/1 for 3 mana, and Savannah Lions, a 2/1 for 1 mana), creatures with a P/M ratio above 1 are very popular (Juggernaut, a 5/3 for 4 mana--no longer type II legal, and Orgg, a 6/6 for 5 mana), and creatures with a P/M ratio of 1 or less generally need a good special power to make it into most tournament decks (the Order of Leitbur, a 2/1 for 2 mana, has three special abilities and are in most tournament decks that can cast them, whereas the Balduvian Barbarians, a 3/2 for 3 mana have not, to my knowledge, ever been in a tournament deck). A creature with a P/M ratio below one will only make it into a tournament deck if it has a high power or good ability in addition to flying (eg, Serra Angel, or Sengir Vampire--that latter creature's real power is the ability to be readily cast via Dark Ritual). It is alot harder to find good mana ratios on larger creatures--although Derelor, a 4/4 for 4 mana, and Ehrnam Djinn, a 4/5 for 4 mana, are tournament favorites, no doubt due to their violation of this larger creature rule. This rule doesn't work everywhere and there are many special cases, but it still is something to look for in a card. Why not factor in toughness? Toughness doesn't win games--a deck of 5/1 creatures will beat a deck of 1/5 creatures every time, as the former only needs a creature advantage for 4 turns, as compared to the latter needing TWENTY turns of superiority to win a game.
Of course, one must also look at the special powers a creature has. The most important power a creature can have is one that can take cards from an opponent (or give cards to you)--although this must be weighed heavily with the cost that comes with activation of the power. Thus, the Hypnotic Spectre, which rips cards out of an opponent's hand every time it deals damage, ranks high in creature powers (the cost to get the effect is nil), whereas Zuran Enchanter's ability to force a player to discard (at a cost of 3 mana) isn't nearly as popular, since, the much more difficult to remove Disrupting Sceptre can do the same, for the same cost. Sometimes the ability to deny an opponent cards can be a bit more subtle, such as the Prodigal Sorcerer's ability to deal 1 point of damage; by merely having this card in play, you've essentially denied your opponent the ability to play any creatures with a toughness of one, as well as gained the ability to destroy any such creatures he already has out--and the situation gets worse the more of these guys you can summon! The Anaba Shaman has the same power, though at the cost of 1 mana--and this small difference is more than enough to make it much less valuable than the Sorcerer.
This leads to another power that a creature, especially a small one, needs to be successful: the ability to defeat/mutually annihilate a creature of higher casting cost (ripping a card IS a legitimate way of beating a larger creature, by putting it in the GY before it gets summoned). Hence, the Order of Leitbur, with its great pumpable power allowing it to easily defeat a 4/4 with but 5 mana in play is a tournament standard (and, most 4/4s require 5 mana to cast, so if OP can summon one, its a fair chance you've got that much mana too); the Hurloon Minotaur, despite its cool artwork, can be crushed by most 4-mana creatures--one can't help but wonder just how many mint condition Hurloons there are. The Royal Assassin is, of course, the best example of a creature with this kind of power--its a shame it can't touch most of the white tournament quality creatures. Dragon Whelps and Cockatrices are likewise popular, despite their low P/M ratios. As the creatures get larger, this ability is less critical--its a rare game where both opponents have a Cosmic Horror (or something of similar stature) in play simultaneously. In general, a high P/M ratio will help to avoid the mid/late game unpleasantness of drawing a creature that can only serve to block and die, granting you, at best, one more turn of hostile creature induced misery.
Creature abilities (beyond increasing power) that your opponent can predict or avoid, or require tapping, are worth quite a bit less and should not be counted on. For example, the Vodalian Mage's ability to counter a spell is almost never, ever, used, as any opponent will realize that he must keep one extra mana around to stop this ability--the value of these abilities comes more from their threat of use than their actual use. Unfortunately, threatening an opponent whose mission in life it is to defeat you, is of little consequence (although, in Melees, such threats are much, much, more valuable). On the other hand,the Mole Worms' ability to tap, and keep tapped, an opponent's land, while not great, is far superior to the Mage's, as there is little your foe can do about it other than dealing with the Worms. One can't help but notice that later expansions contain more creatures with abilities that don't require tapping--WOTC realizes that "tap" is big cost. A player that learns how to exploit these fast-acting creatures will win many a game.
Got a Tidbit of Wisdom or Counter-Argument? Let us know!
Rick (IQRick) runs the InQuest Magic Trivia Game in the InQuest special events chat room, Thursday Nights, 10 EST. (Keyword InQuest) Tune in there and win to get a starter deck in a random CCG.
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Trade/Combat Zone and Marketplace
One thing that drives me nuts is people that insist on using magazine prices for their trades, at least when they think they are not getting a "fair shake". A guy comes up to me, and says "I REALLY want a Manabarbs". I say, "Ok, I'll trade one for a Time Bomb". He whips out InQuest #18, looks things up, and says "No way, Manabarbs is worth $2.50, and Time Bomb is $3!". I offered him a coupla quarters, but he didn't seem to think this evened things up. Guess he didn't really need it after all. Don't get me wrong, mag prices are a great (well, mediocre) way to determine RELATIVE value of cards, but too many people take them as absolutes, and get a little petty about it as well.
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Any submissions or replies become the sole property of Books Electric Publishing.
Feedback...what, nothing witty to say? Nobody had a clever way of commenting on the Phyrexian Vault blunder? For shame!
Until next time!
Our sincere thanks to AOL, Compuserve, InQuest Magazine, Tulane University, and the New Orleans Magic club for their help in preparing this.
Wonderful, some legal stuff: This newsletter contains references to various WOTC copyrighted products; mention of such products is not intended as an infringement on their rights.
