Well one of my favorite articles on the mothership just dropped. Every year there is a tournament where each country sends a team and they play all sorts of team formats. And every year the teams pose for pictures. The full article is here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/wmc13/TeamPhotos. I have posted my highlights.


love the pit sweat, belgium. Michael please show this to Frederik.


My main man Willy rocking a sweet medal.


For the douche holding the flag. What a douche


female


HAIR, dude on the left


Japan: always comes through with something weird.


kiwis. that's dan carter's brother in the center, btw.*


jersey respect for the dude on the left


awesome!




* Probably not dan carter's brother

M14 Sealed #1 - Match Reports

When I left off, I had just submitted a sweet black-white brew with plenty of hard removal, Serra Angel and double Sengir Vampire.

To jog your memory:

The plan is to stay alive, kill threatening things and smash for 4 at a time in the air.

Into battle we go.

Round one, Villain has a green-black deck that plays creatures and removal.

Game one, we grind back and forth, with our black intimidators finding no way through and our removal taking care of any real threats. I grind him out on turn 13.

In comes the Dark Prophecy, which is good against removal and grindy opponents, then also Blightcaster, which grinds pretty well and now I have four enchantments I plan to cast.

Game two, he makes turn one hexproof guy, then on turn three Trollhides it. I drop a turn-five sengir, which stops the beats, then a turn six 4/6 zombie, which holds the ground while the vampire takes to the sky. I end the game with emergency backup Pacifism in hand.

Still had all these Pacifism.

Round two brings another green-black Villain.

I keep a hand with two plains and no swamps, but with 10 in the deck, i feel comfortable with a castable 2-drop and pacifism.

Keep.

Villain gets a mana sliver and follows up with the 3/3 hexproof guy that grows if I play a black spell on his turn. He enchants it with Dark Favor, but Vampire Serra does lots of work.

Take six, gain six, GOOD GAME.

Game two is much tougher, despite a near-perfect opener.

Villain has a fast start: Mana elf accelerates into a turn two Witchstalker and turn three 4/4, I resolve to take seven or eight in order to get a dude in play and not give Witchstalker a counter. but Villain then follows up with Fireshrieker and equip and attack for 10 on turn four.

Nice turn-three board. Note I have two swamps.

I have to doom blade at sorcery speed, then I trade at every opportunity I have, keeping the equipment off my back and running Villain out of cards, but losing quality creatures, like my Sengir and Nightmare. Eventually Villain runs out of creatures and I attack with my terrible squad plus Rod of Ruin. His last creature gets Pacifismed and I have squeak out a victory on turn 13 after nine turns of active Fireshrieker.

Phew!

In round three, I keep a hand with mana, two-drop, three-drop. Smooth sailing, right?

Villain drops a Child of Night, but I have Rod of Ruin in hand. Do I trade my 2/1 for his or let him gain at least six life before I can eat it for full value? I trade, then he drops an Undead Minotaur. I respond with Phyrexian Ghoul/Nantuko Husk/Vampire Aristocrat/Blood Bairn. He makes a 2/2 artifact sliver and I offer in trade for Blood Bairn, since I have a 1/3 flier to control his 2/3, plus Rod and Trading Post coming soon. Villain (gleefully, I assume) accepts the trade, then attacks into my blocker. Since it is a free attack, I block to make him have something, and he makes Chandra to finish off my flier and leave him with a creature and a planeswalker against my empty board.

Oh dear.

I draw Doom Blade and Serra but only have one plains, so I lose in short order to Chandra and Liliana's Reaver.

Chandra's +1 says "You can't even chump, sucker"

As we move to game two, I ponder my options. I like the looks of the green deck, with Bramblecrush and three pump spells to help battle the planeswalker.

This one goes back for six.

This one I keep, but I need a forest soon.

I eventually get the land I need and on turn five, an interesting arises:

Wolf or spider?

Wolf would probably trade for the Reaver, but Villain might sense something is up since I now have two colors of mana and four total yet still have no play. The spider will probably keep the Reaver at bay while I set up a good ambush with the wolf, so I choose spider. I make Sengir, still holding the Briarpack and hoping it or the Giant Growth might enable perhaps the first Sengir Vampire +1/+1 counter in history. 

Villain makes a flying shade and attacks. I trade with Deadly Recluse, thinking that will enable my wolf ambush better, and since now I have Trading Post, make a goat, Giant Growth available to me. That plan works like a champ, getting Liliana's Reaver at the cost of one life and a Giant Growth. Corpse Hauler plus Briarpack is a two-for-one, killing his 5/3 sliver and little goblin for free and now I'm feeling good. Quag Sickness takes out my Sengir Vamp, but I have the board and Bamblecrush in hand for potential Chandras. 

However, I draw two land while Villain makes Pitchburn Devils. I am willing to trade since I can sit back behind my goat moat, but his Wring Flesh empties my board and he keeps the Devils. Chandra makes an appearance and i crush her (with brambles? how?) but I get no answer for Devils or Children of Night with Lightening Talons, so I struggle to hang on with Trading Post but give up the ghost in short order.

At least I killed Chandra

I head into round four at 2-1. Three wins is eight packs, while two wins is just three, so let's go make daddy some tix.

Easy keep.

My turn three Master of Diversity Diversion meets a cancel, but I beat in with my turn-two Corpse Hauler. I draw both big vampires, so things are looking up if I can get some a swamp and another land. 

Villain makes a flying deathtouch Cockatrice, while instead of land I draw a vanilla 2/3. He gets a second 2/2 flier, deprives my zombie minotaur of its senses and meanwhile I draw another not land.

Land please! Also, I don;t know why I''m on top of this replay.

When I block, her Wrings the Griffin's Flesh and keeps getting in there. I draw a swamp and feel obliged to pacify the deathtoucher and play the knight. One more land and the vampires start to come out to play and he only has one card left in hand to my three.

Villain Marks his Bird as a Vampire and gets in for four, gaining four. I draw Lifebane Zombie, which has no targets, but is still better here than Rod. My little 2/1 keeps getting in for two, taking him to 11 versus my 8. He gets another Cockatrice, gets in for four more taking me to four, but I draw the swamp I need and make a vampire. Sengir #1 trades with his 4/4 and I take two making it 2-13, but Villain doesn't know about Sengir #2 yet. I swing him down to seven then play my second five-drop. He concedes!

For game two, I turn to my blue, since he had so many fliers. I also bring in Dark Prophecy and Blightcaster, since it seemed like every since creature Villain had was a 2/2.

Nice curve, but 100% vanilla. Keep anyway.

I curve out real nice, get the beats going quickly, and draw Sengir, so I'm feeling good. Villain makes Cockatrice, then follows up with Fireshrieker. Ummmm. I do believe I will need hard removal to beat this:

Ugh

We each play out our hands, but the table is stalled by the first-striking deathtoucher. I get the Dark Prophecy down and start chumping to draw cards. Eventually I find Liturgy of Blood to get the deathtoucher, but he just makes his 4/6 double strike and I can't even chump at one with Dark Prophecy in play, so I mark of the vampire to gain 4 to go to 5 and have one chumper. 

Do you see the problem here?

Villain sees the on-board kill, shifts his equipment over and gets there. On to game three. I go back to white, since my best chance of dealing with double-striking deathtouchers is to kill the equipment. Villain has also shown me Mark of the Vampire and Sensory Deprivation, so I bring in two Solemn Offering. Out go the minotaur zombies.

I keep, but this is sketchy.

Game three is a taught affair, with me stumbling on mana for a while due to my poor keep.

I main phase a Doom Blade on Villain's Trained Condor, then discard my Nightmare Horse after he makes another Cockatrice. 

Main phase Doom Blade hurts

Villian follows up with Fireshrieker for the full combo, but I get the plains to Solemn Offering immediately. Villain Rots my Mind, which is not the worst considering my mana trouble, plus I have my own Mind Rot waiting for him to hold only two cards. I start to build my board with Blood Bairn but Charging Griffin was countered. We trade little guys and I pacify his deathtoucher. Then Villain plays Dismiss into Dream.

Go look it up, I'll wait. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=370796

However, this leaves Villain open to Rot for his last two cards, so into the bin go Frost Breath and Time Ebb, each of which is hard removal under Dismiss into Dream! Immediate concession.

So I ran decently, went 3-1, and earned eight virtual packs of M14. Selling five of those (have to keep a draft set, right?) makes 15 tix, plus I liquidated the foily Ring of Three Wishes and the Lifebane Zombie for 8 more tix. I entered the event with 24 tix and now have 23, plus a couple speculative rares that could increase in price and a draft set. Look for an M14 draft coming soon.

M14 Online Sealed #1 - Deck Construction

 I crack under the pressure of NEW CARDS!!! and pony up 24 tickets to play four rounds of M14 sealed online.

The first thing I do when I crack a sealed pool is take a gander at the rares. Not that having a bomb in one color is going to mean I always go in that direction, but I like to peruse the rares and uncommons before getting down to the meat of the situation. Weirdly, I have three black and four artifact rares (foil mystic Ring of Three Wishes!) None are unstoppable bombs so I move on to my next step, which is separating the wheat from the chaff.

I move all the cards I would want to play from each color down. This is a fast and loose judgment, but it gives me a pretty quick idea of what the pool looks like. Take a second to check our what I've got.

Click to enlarge. 

That's a lot of black. Black is definitely in.

Next, I remove the red, because it is just not going to make the cut. Now, I try different combinations with the black, sorted by mana cost to see what the curve looks like. These are rough sketches of a deck, with 23-30 cards included and not all the final decisions made. I could go black-blue, black-green, or black-white very easily.

Blue has the best two-drop slot, but they are defensive.

Green has the least depth, but the addition of three combat tricks is nice.

White has the best removal, plus another bonkers 5-drop flier and a good four-drop flier. 

The white deck is the slowest of the three choices and has the worst mana, but from what I have read, M14 is a relatively slow set, so I love all the removal and top end power level. I still have a few cuts to make:

• Dark Prophecy is interesting but probably unnecessary. 
• Mind Rot is nice card advantage in a slow core set, especially if you can get their last two cards. 
• Blightcaster is a remote possibility, with 4 enchantments. 
• Dawnstrike Paladin is fine, but I already have three fives and two sixes that I like better. 
• Same for the Stonehorn Chanter (terrible name)
• Capashen Knight is not good (too much of a mana hog to do anything useful), but I may bring him in just to add a second two-drop. He is also good with Mark of the Vampire.
• Fortify is a great versatile trick, but I'm not the white weenie deck that really needs it.
• Trading post is very versatile, but no one thing it does is amazing.
• Door of Destinies never gets any real consideration. Maybe in a sliver deck.
• Ring of Three wishes is 10 mana to tutor one card, 15 for two, and 20 for three. go ahead and count how much total mana you have at your disposal in any given game that lasts x turns and you make all your land drops.

turns	total mana
1	1
2	3
3	6
4	10
5	15
6	21
7	28
8	36
9	45

Lessons: mana is precious, wishes are always a trap.

The deck I submitted is below:

I cut Dark Prophecy and then Blightcaster in favor of Capashen Knight.

Match reports will be next.

M14 draft (creativity is overrated)

Spent the afternoon at Gamma Ray Lounge drafting some M14! Pretty chill place actually. Less food/drink options than card kingdom but looks like a good crowd of regulars. They put is in two pods of eight for drafting and then we were ripping packs open.

I tried desperately to be like Brent and record each pack as it went around but even scribbling at max speed I was slowing the draft down far too much. And I can't even read what I wrote down. In hindsight I'll snap pictures with my phone for post-game analysis but alas, alack, not this time. 

Drafting was pretty straight-forward. Didn't take anything too committal in the early packs and then I kept seeing red and green handed to me so I guess I went as GENERIC AS POSSIBLE. A red/green creature thumper deck with combat tricks? Oh the creativity!

Final draft

Deadly Recluse

Predatory Sliver x3

Voracious Wurm

Advocate of the Beast x2

Rootwalla

Giant Spider

Rumbling Baloth x4 (!)

Sporemound

Lay of the Land x2

Giant Growth

Plummet

Trollhide

Verdant Haven x2

Hunt the Weak x2

Howl of the Night Pack

Dragon Egg

Regathan Firecat

Canyon Minotaur

Pitchburn Devils

Shock x2

Thunder Strike x2

Chandra's Outrage x2

Lava Axe x2

(and some random crap)

First some notes. Let's hear it for taking ZERO rares! I opened these two and can't remember the third.

 

Delightful cards, and maybe I should have taken the Prophecy, but I just wasn't inspired. I took a Baloth instead of the DP. Eh. 

The deck plan seems clear: get a 4/4 out on turn four and start pounding away with it. That put me on green as a primary and red for tricks and support. Also, I wasn't feeling the need for either manafixing or going lean. Aiming for a vanilla mix of 17 land, 18 creatures, and 5 spells. Whaddya got?

Red/Green Creativity is Overrated

Two Drop

Deadly Recluse

Predatory Sliver x3

Voracious Wurm

Three Drop

Advocate of the Beast x2

Rootwalla

Dragon Egg

Regathan Firecat

Four Drop

Giant Spider

Rumbling Baloth x4

Canyon Minotaur

Five Drop

Pitchburn Devils

Spells

Giant Growth, Shock x2, Thunder Strike x2, Hunt the Weak

Ending up with 6 spells and 17 creatures. I stared at Sporemound good and hard but ultimately I decided that in any event I would rather cast Hunt the Weak, so I cut it. Cutting the Chandra's Outrage (two!) also hurt, but I just didn't like the mana. This deck was going to do one thing: get up in your face and force you to draw your best removal. 

Game 1: 

Facing against an overwhelming black deck with a splash of white. Did someone say removal? 

   

But the real problem was the 

 

He just had a bunch of powerful synergies, clearing my table and occasionally digging in with a 2:1 with the Blightcaster. I would race to a slight lead and then be overwhelmed and lose to the Auramancer plinking me. Spoiler alert: this guy went 3-0 without dropping a match it seems.

Match #2

Pete was telling me that if you deck simply functions, it will win half the games. This was definitely one of those games. I got a little saucy keeping a five lander with two of my four drops and we trade some board development. I start overrunning him and he gets out 

This is kind of an interesting fellow. 4/2 regenerating sounds awful to face against but he still has to sac his creatures to do so. What it ends up being is him trading a 2/2 or 2/1 for my 2/3 or 3/3 creatures. Which isn't BAD per se, but he really needs some sort of creature generation backing him up. My solution was an elegant and delicate maneuver, like a swiss watch.

 

Oh red. So subtle. Never change. 2-0 with ease. Fourth turn Baloths exert a lot of pressure.

Set III

Third game was against the goofiest mono blue deck. Super friendly guy, he was practicing moving from online magic to in-person, so we fumbled through a lot of mechanics together. His deck relied on three things

 

Not a typo: he actually had two of the damn things. The first game I raced him down to 3 life and he starts getting out these ridiculous heavy hitters. Here I make a colossal error and misuse a Shock to kill one of his other fliers. I should have counted my outs and realized that my only hope for killing him was getting both of my shocks and praying that he doesn't have Negates or the like. He swings for a few times with his fliers (keeping the sphinxes back for necessary defense against my Baloths) dealing 5 damage and drawing four cards. Except this is sealed. He does this three times and realize that his entire deck is down to ONE card. He starts dropping merfolk and using his whale to kill me via land but he only gets me down to four before he is unable to draw. We were both laughing pretty hard and decided that you only need one Sphinx out at a time.

The second game was similar to an earlier game where I kept a 5 lander with two shocks. Fortunately I drew creatures and by the time the Fail Whale landed I was able to keep it at bay long enough with my Recluse and the threat of shocks/thunder strikes that he promptly went 16-7-dead.

In conclusion it was a really fun game and draft. I felt like my deck was nothing special but pretty much operated as it was supposed to every time. Not having to mulligan is really nice. Also Raygun Lounge does three rounds, not four. Perfection itself.

-Jed

I call bullshit

The meddling mage himself, Chris Pikula did not get elected to the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame. That is complete and utter bullshit. It was bullshit last year and the year before. It is still bullshit. It will be bullshit when he doesn't get elected next year.

And to pour salt on the wounds wizards also did this to him a few years back:

M14 Draft Simulator Live Now

For those of you who may be interested but not yet aware of its existence, Wizards posted a draft simulator for M14 today: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/activity/1286