Regarding Cluestones...

I'm not alone:

Cardboard Crack - Halloween (http://cardboard-crack.com/post/101390631864/halloween)

In a couple years, Mr. Cardboard Crack can rerun this comic replacing Cluestones with Banners.

As a side note, is "Ad Cards" what other people call them? I've always said "Tips & Tricks" (but with a heavy dose of irony), because I believe that's what they were labeled the first time they appeared.

Happy Halloween!

And now a word from our sponsor...

(I'll update about my MTGO drafting experiences after just one more turn. Stupid alien wolf beetles!)

One Drop, Two Drop, Red Drop, Blue Drop

One of my big memories in drafting M15 was how it was defined by one toughness. With so many one power creatures running around, whether or not a creature could profitably interact (e.g. win) was a major defining valuation. Recall the sad fate of the Oreskos Swiftclaw. Well Khans is clearly defined by morphs: 2/2 creatures landing on turn three with extremely high reliability. As such, the efficacy of your creatures boils down to 'how does this interact with a 2/2 bear?' Does it win, lose, trade, or draw? This analysis can be brought into sharp relief by the batmobile:





On the surface this looks like a great value play: three abilities, one of them evasion, with a reasonable mana cost. Sign me up! But the bat is basically useless against 2/2s, It can't block them and the 1 power puts basically no pressure on the Villain. Imagine the Swiftwing in a set with tons of enchants floating around, like Theros. The 'French Vanilla' test (accounting for the bargain trio of abilities) would bestow a generous grade reflecting its high performance as two-drop with good upside. But here in Khans? What am I going to do, drop a Siegecraft on it? Gross.

Or to look at it another way, we have solved the mystery of not one but TWO Elmers in the set.

 

Let the 2/2s beware!

Seriously Kotaku, get your act together

So Kotaku decided to rip off our recent post about ranking names. They chose to rank the leaders from civilization V. Here's the link to their article. Their rankings are wrong.

"Harald Bluetooth" at number 18. What planet are they on?

Khans Sealed Deck #1 - Deck Construction

For the first time in quite a while, I fired up the old MODO machine and hopped into a Khans of Tarkir sealed deck release event. Let's get right to the pool:

Sweet fetch, bro

In this format, the first thing I'm going to look at is the fixing. I included the banners because they are cards if just barely. If we want to go full 5 color, then we have 5 red, 5 green, 3 blue, 3 white, and 2 black, plus 10 basics to split up. That doesn't feel like quite enough for my taste, although if the pool pushes us that way, it might be possible. By clan, there are 4 Temur fixers, 3 Mardu, 2 Sultai, 2 Jeskai, and 2 Abzan. Essentially our fixing is spread out across all colors.

On to the real cards...

The L is Silent - 00001

It's been a long time coming but we finally have our first podcast ready for prime time. On today's episode Pete and Jed do a crack a pack from the new set Khaaaaaaaaans of Tarkir. Enjoy! 

• Subscribe to The L is Silent at http://feeds.feedburner.com/thelissilent-magicanotes
• Some sound effects and music courtesy of  freesfx.co.uk

That's actually super charming.

Just opening up an old starter pack of Alpha. Man those cards were terrible... Feel free to skip to the 8 minute mark.


http://www.avclub.com/article/guy-opens-old-magic-gathering-pack-finds-card-wort-210484

Naming things is hard

I'll just come out and say it. I can't stand the new names for the wedges. I tried to remember when Ravnica first came out and how I felt about those names. Also for Shards of <Something really stupid that I can't remember>.

Azorius, Dimir, Rakdos, Gruul, Selesnya, Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros, and Simic

Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya

Mardu, Jeskai, Temur, Sultai, and Abzan

I also should mention the totally sweet wiki page I mercilessly stole images from.

These names are super important. We used to have to use dumb color shortcut jargon for the names of our decks. Like BUG or RUG or something else totally dumb. Now we have slick one word names. But can I stand saying the new ones. As I said I'm not sure if it's just because they are new.

Here are my official rankings of all 20 names.

1. Golgari
2. Rakdos
3. Jund
4. Naya
5. Azorius (... B.I.G. lol - that's what we've always been thinking, right?)
6. Bant
7. Boros (serious GRRM ripoff)
8. Simic
9. Selesnya
10. Izzet
11. Temur  (town in Kahzakstan ripoff)
12. Dimir
13. Mardu
14. Jeskai
15. Grixis
16. Orzhov
17. Sultai
18. Abzan
19. Esper (serious FF ripoff)

        .......

        .......

        .......

   

  83. Gruul  (we all can agree this one is just horrible, I mean pronunciation? gruel? grul?)

Thoughts? Comments?

If I had more time I would run each term through a neutral google search and make a sweet xkcd style graphic. Maybe next week.

Khans Drafting 10-11-14

Drafting!
The first pack was pretty unexciting. It was some elaborate three color, non-bomby rare. So I took a very reliable white two drop. After that I take the tri-land (couldn't believe that was passed to me. Works in Abzan obviously but also totally fine double-land in Mardu and Sultai) I snag another tri land and take my favorite 2 drop morph, Horde ambusher. I start to see some key Sultai cards (Scout, & Bitter Revelation) so I pick those up. I'm actually pretty happy with my opening pack, except for the lack of bombs.

 

 

 

Pack #2!! Opening choice is a doozy.

 

 vs

I stare at this for a long time. Stone-cold red bomb vs. pretty solid removal in my color. I flinch and stay in black. Arrrgh! I make LR cry. I guess I'm somewhat rewarding for my steadfastness with a Heir of the Wilds and Rakshasa Deathdealer, two quality two drops. Armament Corps is also pretty close to a bomb (if you squint a little) but I don't have very much outlast in my deck. There's also a fair amount of decent red & mardu cards coming my way... starting to second guess myself...

Round 3:

I'm super happy with my first few: great 2 drop Outlast, a flexible morph and evasion. But white and black are feeling really picked over and there's a lot of red slipping through. Nothing "OMG" but just solid white/red and Mardu tri-color. Should I have gone red? Probably? Maybe? I really liked the rakshasa...



here's my final deck, the four slot is a little too full, the two slot too unreliable with my splash in green being weighted earlier in the curve.

1 drop: Mardu hateblade (1)
2 drop: Rakshasa Deathdealer, Heir of the Wilds, Seeker of the Way, Ainok Bond-Kin (4)
3 drop/Morph: Krumar Bond-Kin x2, Woolly Loxodon, Mardu Hordechief (4)
4 drop: Unyielding Krumar x2, Alabaster Kirin x2, Salt Road Patrol, Longshot Squad (6)
5 drop: Armament Corps, Hooting Mandrils, Swarm of Bloodflies (3)

Spells: Bitter Revelation x2, Debilitating Injury x2, Throttle x1

18 Lands: Tri land x2, Forest x4, Swamp x6, Plains x6
Round 1
Faced off against Peter, running a red/blue/green Temur deck... but it was strangely heavy on the counterspells. In the midgame I was in a bad spot facing Snowhorn Rider with a Dragon Grip on it for 7/5 First Strike and Trampling. Except he was unduly afraid of my morphs and stayed off me for *far* too many turns. Eventually I got my shields up with the Wooly Loxadon and then I was able to grind around him for a win. The second game was even less remarkable as I landed my Armament Corps on curve and that was pretty much game over. Once I figured out that he was running 4+ counterspells it was pretty easy to play around them while he was tapped out. Morphs are also solid at dodging counterspells. We talk a bit afterwards and he was playing a control deck without the sweepers. That's probably not going to cut it.
2-0

Round 2
Playing against Conner running a Mardu deck... except it was all control-y with a bunch of outlast and 4 drops. However in game 1, the mana curve doesn't matter if he drops
  
... by turn 5. That's a lot of pressure! I'm down to six health facing a miserable board state and a 3/4 Abzan Falconer. Having no choice and facing an overrun I Bitter Revelation for an answer... that I pull! Throttle; so good. SO good. The board stalemates with my Rakshasa Deathdealer holding the line with a few random creatures versus an alarming large board with a bunch of 1/1 goblin tokens running around. I start playing very carefully since at 4 life I'm one X spell or counterswing away. But my Rakshasa starts murdering goblins and I establish the board superiority and work him down.

The second game I stayed confidently in control. Checking in at turn 5... the board was totally clear. I cheerfully traded and removed any threats. Eventually I establish my board and just winnow him down.


2-0

Round 3
I am facing off against the Sultai. He has a LOT of graveyard fixing and A LOT of Delve to go with it. We're both building slowly though he stays on five land and mills away two more land. This doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence. We trade blows and we're at 13-18. I think I have him, my Blood Fly is at 9/9 and he only has one flying blocker left and one other creature. Then I make a fatal, careless mistake. He makes a pointless attack and I chump block with my warrior token to make my blood fly EVEN BIGGAR. He then Dead Drops, clearing my board. Next turn he sticks two huge creatures and I'm dead drawing. I was very upset at myself. It was clearly a pointless attack, my health total was just fine. Why block? Against a delve deck no less.

The second game was even shorter because he landed a 5th turn


I had one combat to try and Throttle it with some combat damage but he had the counterspell. So that was a very fast game. His deck was pretty stacked but it was slow. The classic deck that would have lost to a 2-3-4 curve out Mardu assault. Give how my deck was neither fast NOR slow, it puttered just enough to lose to it. I am angry that he had two stonecold bombs in Abzan that he splashed for successfully (the ivorytusk and Duneblast) that obviously should have been mine. Obviously. He had crazy mana-fixing. Good for him


0-2

Conclusion
Pretty happy with the 2-1, that felt like where the deck was going to be. I still got a little overly obsessed with staying on my colors when maybe splashing red was a stronger place to be at. Especially with that second pack Crater's Claws. I know Marshall/Brian would have taken it. Reviewing the table, we had a Jeskai, Mardu, Sultai (with the Abzan splash), a messy Temur and a four color mess on my right around Abzan with blue added. There wasn't anything egregiously open but I felt like maybe slipping into Mardu earlier would have been the right thing to do. Hard to say.

MVP

This guy is tits, talk about a quadrant theory all-star. He develops, he defends (so-so, leaving up mana isn't ideal obviously), he finishes, he breaks parity. Can't ask for too much more than that.

Deck Concerns
Breaking it apart, I was far too in love with my 4 drops. I had two of the 4/2 bears that weren't in the deck and I absolutely should have substituted out two four-drops for them. That would also help tilt me a little more towards green though I rarely hurt for mana. Those triple lands are absolute awesome. I think it's actually pretty important to try and regularly hit your 2/3/4 curve out. You don't have to be superstar racing but have some serious board presence to pressure slow decks. Next time I want to be closer to 5 or 6 playable two drops, and 4 or 5 playable three/morphs. This deck also felt very inbetween-y. Not enough outlast to really dominate the end game, though it could break deadlocks nicely.

Other Notes

This is really quite reliable. It did solid work against me, Brian's recap of "counter target spell you care about" is accurate.


Underperformed a little but not a lot. The evasion and 2/3 vigilance is pretty sweet and if I faced more aggro decks I think I might have liked it more.


Not BAD but not great. Takes a little bit to get up and running. Token creature deaths DO impact it, which is nice but not going to win any races with other five slots. A classic "five slot of last resort".


Was very pleased every time I drew this card, even without any real Sultai/delve synergies. Go digging for a card that matters when you know if you want land, creatures, or answers. Two might be on the high end without a lot of delve to benefit from it (especially with how crowded my 4-slot was) but greatly enjoyed. Would play again.

Key cards & Deck Archtypes

My greatest weakness in sealed is I draft a few good cards early and then stick to that plan NO MATTER WHAT comes down the pike. So I'm trying to do some homework and memorize some tells that a particular clan or deck style is open. This is more than just keeping an eye out for Murderous Cut (which everyone loves!) because being passed that late is so blatant, even I can't miss that. I'm looking for key engine cards. These aren't necessarily first picks by any means.

 

Abzan (Outlast)

The Outlast creatures are so good and the mechanic of giving "everything with a +1/+1 counter _____" is SO good that you don't normally see too many of those late. With it being a late game play, Abzan needs to gum up the early game. 

  

Mardu (Horde)

In many ways mardu is the easiest to build because you swarm early and swarm often. There's a fair amount of overlap with Jeskai in the sense that you have small creatures running around with some combat tricks. Still, with the Warrior keyword and some white/black that isn't terribly relevant to the Abzan, here are some good ones.

      

Delve Engine

The Delve cards are really, really good and most decks benefit from throwing in a few. However there are a few cards that really help the Delve engine get going early by populating the graveyard.

  

 

The key "good" delve cards are as follows:
     

Tricks & Tempo (Jeskai)

This seems like the hardest deck to build, but it does offer the clearest "build around me" uncommon in Quiet Contemplation. You need enough tricks to respect Prowess but enough creatures to pull it off. Jeskai creatures aren't the biggest but they do have a fair amount of flying (given how rare it is in the set)