Alara un-unbroken (as in, it's broken, the book was very bad)

It was about three years ago now when I found The Gathering Dark in a charity shop for 50p.  Having just gotten back into magic earlier that year, I snapped it up (and what a bargain – Amazon lists it at £14.99!).  It was a fairly appropriate first step in a way, despite being several years old.  One of the themes of the current set was ‘trap’ cards, and The Gathering Dark was certainly that.

Having read a fair few Warcraft and WoW novels (several of which are written by the same author as TGD), I had low expectations but they were actually somewhat exceeded.  Now, let’s be clear, this was no classic of fantasy writing, but it was solid enough – a sort of literary equivalent of period costume movies like Kingdom of Heaven: entertaining enough if you don’t wish to tax your brain too heavily.

The plot made sense, the characters were just about deep enough to be fairly engaging, and the writing was passable.  I soon learned that this was the exception rather than the rule.

That Christmas, I asked for the Shards block novel, Alara Unbroken.  My God, what an awful mess of a book!  AU showed me clearly the difficulties that must stem from attaching a story to a game, rather than vice versa.  The first problem was that the overarching story of the Alara involves five different worlds or ‘shards.’  In-game, this gave identity to cards and colours, and worked very well.  In the novel it was a disaster.  The author, Doug Beyer, tried to give page time to all five shards, meaning a whole host of characters of varying importance was necessary to breathe life into the shards.  And yet, almost all of the well-developed ones were on Bant, rendering the other shards’ characters redundant.

The novel lacked direction, and would have been far better served to ignore the other shards.  Sarkhan’s subplot on Jund was tedious but relevant, so too Ajani’s on Naya.  Grixis and Esper are barely memorable – something about humans trying to escape the demons of Grixis, while Esper was something an artifact chap swimming in the sea… or something.

Then, of course, all the loose threads (a very appropriate description) culminated in a huge battle between Ajani and Nicol Bolas, making the other subplots feel even less important.  These kinds of fights are rarely entertaining and, in my experience, most novels try to avoid them because of it.  Not to be perturbed, though, Beyer dived head first into his best impression of a Dragonball Z battle.  It was dragged-out, dull, and oh so very predictable – and I don’t just mean in the fact that the good guy won.  The way Ajani won could be seen coming from the first time you knew they would fight one another.

A lot of MTG story nerds decry the fact that there is only one novel per block nowadays (there used to be one per set).  AU showed me both sides of that coin.  Heads: less books means less poorly-written novels tacked onto a story which is designed primarily to be a card game.  Tails: more books would have given each shard room to breathe and develop in Alara.

As I alluded to earlier, the problem really comes from trying to staple a novel onto a card game with only skin-and-bones story.  The fact that very few decent authors need this kind of work is also an issue, of course.  Sometimes it’s going to work, other times it will fall flat on its face but almost never is it going to be better than a “real” book.  Experience has borne this out for me to the point where I will only buy canon novels when they’re a) cheap and b) I have nothing better to read.  Then again, with Innistrad being famously ‘top-down design’ perhaps the next novel will be readable.  Fingers crossed!

Sexiest Plays of Innistrad so far

Innistrad has been playable for a few weeks now, and the response has been universally positive in my experience.  The flavour is probably the best ever, the cards are fun, and as a limited format it has been very enjoyable so far.  Having drafted the format a few times I've already had a handful of fun/silly plays, so let's count 'em.

Snap Pick: Last Wednesday I finally managed to open a Snapcaster Mage - yeah, i was pretty happy about it.  However, I was drafting from my fatpack and fell prey to the urge to rare draft for value.  I ended up with a three colour deck, and Owen convinced me to play a single Plains to flashback my Unburial Rites.  I got crushed in match one, got a bye in match two, and then the magic happened in match three.  Up 1-0, I had milled Devil's Play and was only running two Mountains (yeah, this was a SWEET deck!).  I'm pretty far ahead on-board, but I can only swing with my Invisible Stalker and he's on eight life.  Then I draw Tiago Chan: sweet.  Swing for one unblockable, put you to seven; cast Snappy, flashback Devil's Play with my one in-play Mountain with X = seven.  Fun times.


Slow?  If you say so: The general consensus has been that Innistrad is a fairly typically slow limited format.  But yesterday I had a turn five kill and, messed up a turn six kill and almost killed on turn six off a mulligan to four.  Yeah, I was red and yeah my opponent did little-to-nothing, but it was pretty fun... for me.

Turn one: Reckless Waif, go. 
Him: Plains go.
Turn two: flip the Waif, swing for three (17), cast Village Ironsmith.
Him Forest go.
Turn three: flip the Ironsmith, swing for six (11)
Him: chump blocker, go
Turn four: swing for six, gets blocked (8)
Him: chump blocker, I Brimstone Volley his face (5)
Turn five: Swing for six, one guy gets blocked (2), Bump in the Night (-1)

So, yeah, it's possible but won't happen all that often.

Could've, but didn't: Back to my four-colour monstosity for a moment. I had the opporunity to make a ridiculous but ultimately pointless play against the same guy.  Snappy and Devil's Play are both in my graveyard thanks to Trepidation Blade.  I draw Unburial Rites with eight lands on-board.  So the fancy but uselesss play; cast Rites (three lands untapped), put Snappy in play (one land untapped), flashback Devil's Play for zero!  Sweet, right?

Sample Conversation From Sheffield Magic

Patrick Bateman: Mythicthatdoesnothing is awesome, could it be good in a new control deck?  It only costs six and is almost as good as a titan.  All you have to do is sacrifice 8 creatures, discard your hand and and exile all nonland cards from your library and you have a 6/6 for 3!

John Roberts: No Patrick, you are in fact very wrong.  Titans are just better but here are four paragraphs about the subject anyway... [SEE MORE]

Stephen McAleer: That's what she said!

Michael Radford: I'm not sure, but it could be pretty good in limited.

Michael Boon: Cn i boro four of them 4 FNM this week?


Alistair Kennedy: Something something Legacy something something.

Stephen McAleer: Okay, but seriously, this card could be okay if there's a deck that wants to remove all its relevant spells and empty its hand quickly whilst discarding its hand.  Grave Titan is probably better, but Mythicthatdoesnothing might see a little play.

Andy Mather: It's not great but i guess we have to do the best we can with what Wizards gives us ^^

Owen Debenham: You're all wrong.

What i did on my Holidays: AKA my First Nationals

UK Nationals happened this past weekend.  It was in Sheffield - practically my home town (Barnsley doesn't have a real book shop, ergo it is not a real town) - so I pulled together a blue/black control list for Patriot Games pre-nats standard tournament, packed up about 50% of my belongings and headed to my Gran's house to live in Chapeltown for four nights.

Night one was literally as medicore as possible.  I went 2-1-2 (the middle is a tie, for Americans who don't know how numbers work), which I kind of expected.  I think blue/black control is fine in general, but the meta game at Patriot is sporadic, and with a bunch of unknown (to me) players attending as well, I was pretty worried about the aggro decks.  My losses came against an interesting Jund pod deck by Rob, which I feel like I should've won, and Quinton's mono red, which is basically a write-off.  The whole match with Quinton lasted about ten minutes, including sideboard and shuffling time - that should tell you all you need to know.  The draw came against a pod-less version of RUG.  I had only played against that deck once before, months ago, and i think i made a couple of play errors.  It was a very intense game, which i feel like i could have won if i was more experienced in the matchup, but that's what happens when you only play a handful of standard games per month.

My wins were fairly straight forward, not really worth talking about.  I beat a homebrew red/blue control list, which got mana screwed in both games, and a bizarre red/white/black homebrew with hawks, equipment and Dark Tutelage.  My opponent, Matt, who borrowed the deck from a friend, graciously killed himself with the enchantment in game one, while game two was a fairly straightforward Solemn-into-Sphinx demolition job.

I went home feeling like i would probably skip the standard LCQ next day, even if i scrubbed out in the limited one.  The meta felt pretty stacked against U/B, and i'm far from the best pilot for it so i went to bed hoping to open some titans in the morning.

A quick word on M12 limited.  So far, it has been cruel to me.  At the prerelease i used up all my bomb-luck by opening a Grave Titan and Sphinx of Uthuun.  Since then, i have lucked-out horribly in every draft, even if i had a decent deck (see the post about game day, for example).  In short, i felt like i was due some luck.

But if there is such a person as lady luck, i must've pissed her off more than i thought.  The first - and, tellingly, only draft - actually went okay.  I opened a Sorin's Vengeance in pack one and passed nothing in black except for a Wring Flesh.  I picked up a Berserker and Incinerate back-to-back, then saw basically zero red playables for the rest of pack one.  No problem, I would just play blue/black control in limited, too.

Pack two continued down that path, with a handy Doom Blade being the highlight.  In pack three, i don't really remember what happened, except that i somehow got a third pick Sorin's Vengeance.  Now, that seems pretty good to me; if i can stall out until seven, the game should be pretty un-losable, right?  The problem is that i got pretty greedy.  With little decent removal, i decided to splash the Incinerate and a Shock - yep, i splashed with two triple-black spells in my deck.  And no, i didn't have a single Manalith.  In retrospect i don't really know what i was thinking, but i at least had the decency to cut my Devouring Swams so i didn't need any double-mana until turn five.

The first match actually went surprisingly well, lulling me into a fall sense of security.  I won the entire match with just five attacks.  Granted, in game two he wrecked me with green beaters before i could do a single point of damage, but games one and three were comfortable wins.

Match two showed me just what was wrong with my deck, however.  I played against the U/W aggro deck with a bunch of pegasi and drakes.  Game one lasted a LONG time before he managed to "out-dude" me and finish the game off.  I did resolve a Vengeance - my only damage of the whole match, as it turned out - but i didn't see the 2nd one and couldn't draw enough guys to keep up.  In game two i mulliganed to five and got stuck on lands.  My only spell - a Skywinder Drake - got Mana Leaked and i quickly scooped.

At this point, i figured that i would drop out if i didn't win my last match.  A 1-2 record would make it so that even 3-0'ing the 2nd draft probably wouldn't be good enough.  So when i sat down opposite Russel (of Worldslayer and card-throwing fame) i did so with equal measures of excitement and dread.  Excitement because i know i'm a better player than him, but dread because i know how shitty i would feel if i exited nationals because of losing to him.

Sure enough, i cast a Vengeance after his green and white dorks beat me down to 13.  I stablised comfortably from there and killed him.  A few nerves dealt with, but in game two it was almost as one-sided as my mull to five in the previous match.  I did zero damage while his crappy dudes, and a massacre wurm, ate my life very quickly.  So, game three, i was on the play, and I kept two Vengeances, four lands and a dude.  Oh, god, why?  I've read a lot of pro players speaking about how they will play worse and keep bad hands against a player they view as inferior and this was a perfect example.

But rather than simply crushing me, the game teased me cruelly.  I drew pretty well, and we stalled out for quite a while - me at 15 life and him at 11.  I bashed him down to 6 but then he drew guys and i stumbled.  His board was big and scary - including an un-thirsted Wurm - but I had a chump blocker and Royal Assasin with six lands, including triple black.  I untapped, failed to draw a land and passed the turn.  He untapped, slammed a Celstial Purge and killed my Royal Assasin.  No worries, I still have a chump blocker and plenty of life.  He passed the turn, I untapped, miss on land but played another chump blocker before i passed.  I still had plenty of time, I assumed.  He untapped, slammed a Crown of Empires, tapped my biggest blocker and killed me with exactly 15 damage.  Oops.

Still, with four days hindsight, there's no point in crying about bad luck.  My first nationals taught me a harsh but important lesson - one that i can apply to any of the competitive games i play.  Concentrate on the game, not on my opponent.  Sure, keep an eye for mistakes and know where you can get an edge, but you still have to play well.  Magic isn't a game where the best player always wins.  Underestimating an opponent is almost as bad as, oh, lets say, splashing cards in a deck with triple-black spells.  Splashing in a deck with two triple-black cards is stupidly greedy, especially in a high-ish level event like nationals.

I can bitch about getting unlucky with the mulligan in round two and not drawing land in round three, but they wouldn't have been such problems if i had built a better deck.  Having basically one win condition is not a viable option unless you really build around it.  This weekend showed me that i need to play a lot more than i do.

Still, on the plus side, i did play my first ever minimasters, which is pretty awesome fun.  I even won at my first ever attempt, thanks in no small part to Fireball.  I did volunteer my services to Rich Hagon, who seemed like a thoroughly decent bloke, but i ended up being too addled and busy to actually go and see him again to do some writing.  Ho-hum, i definitely need to be more prepared for the next event like this.

But overall, i was pretty disappointed with my performance at nationals.  I enjoyed the weekend as a whole, but I feel like i let myself down in terms of playing and drafting.  And as for two-headed giant, well... that seriously was annoying unlucky, completely outplaying our opponents, only to die to a stupid overrun.  Best-of-one is not cool, and if i'd known it was like that i probably wouldn't have signed up in the first place.  I still think we could've gone 4-2 if Tom had stuck around though (he went home when we were 1-2).  Our pool was incredible!

Oh well... next year, eh?

Just because Solemn is back, doesn't mean Golems is a deck

About six weeks ago, i started playing on Cockatrice.  It has its flaws, and you play against a noticable number of mongoloids, but it's free and i'm always broke.  At least it automatically adds pictures, which is an improvement on Magic Workstation.

Naturally, i've been testing Mono Black Control a fair bit and today I had a beautiful moment.  My opponent was playing an "original" white/green Golem deck using Solemn Simulacrum (good) and Tempered Steel (good) alongside the Splicers (not so much).  Naturally, i drew badly and was playing my removal spells almost immediately - the incidental lifegain just about keeping me alive.  After he cast Precursor Golem i had to use my Black Sun's Zenith just to stay alive, shrinking all his Golems to 1/1 (and killing the Splicers, but who cares).

And then my eyes lit up.  I drew Consume Spirit and laughed out loud as i sank all my mana in to it, happily raising my life total from two to 26 and killing all of his Golems, thanks to Precusor.  I was happy to stabilise for the time being, but it was even better than I first thought.  Looking at the chat window, my opponent had given me a fairly standard "??"  followed by "you targetted Lodestone." I explain to him, since he apparently doesn't understand his own cards, that it copies to every Golem since Lodestone Golem is, shockingly, a Golem.

Next, he did was any self-respecting 'netizen' would do when made to look like a moron: he left the game.

Fuck infect

Yeah, fuck infect.  That's all.

Worldslaying the M12 prerelease

So, yeah, Worldslayer is awful.  But since casual cards often make for the best stories i figured i'd throw this one out there.

I was playing against the guy who always says "if i just drew this card..." and the like.  He was playing Worldslayer... maindeck... so not really a surprise that he's that guy, right?  I was playing UB with a red splash (for Incinerate and Fireball, because d'uh) and a Grave Titan.  It was a fairly control-ish deck (although i did win one game with a bunch of bears and an Aether Adept), stalling for six lands (or seven for FoF Sphinx, who's actual name escapes me).

Villain was playing some kind of RB aggro deck with nothing super exciting.  He had a ton of mediocre one-drops, so he had me down to a single life by the time i stablised.  He had a Tormented Soul on-board when i hit seven mana to cast the Sphinx.  I hit some lands, a card i can't remember and, crucially, Wring Flesh.  For some reason unbeknownst to me, he gave me a swamp and the Wring Flesh... which is exactly what i needed.  Okay!

So i proceed to attack with my Sphinx, praying that he wouldn't draw a Shock or an Incinerate.  He didn't, and i bashed him down to Fireball range.  With a genuine sigh of relief, that was game one.

Game two, the Worldslayer came into play.  He was behind on the board, what with me having a Grave Titan in play.  So he equips the Tormented Soul, takes 4 damage from my zombies (after Assasinating my Titan with Royal Assasin) and, sure enough, slays the world on his turn.  I held back an Island and a Fireball which i had been unable to cast.  I then drew three lands in a row, followed by a Salamander Rogue (best creature type ever, by the way) and started beating at his then-14 life.  He eventually drew a guy to stall me, and cast a new Twisted Soul, with enough mana to equip the Sword of Stupid and Dumb.  We were both at 7 life by now and he was vaguely ahead on the board: two guys, one of which was unblockable, to my one.

I was still holding the fireball at this point, and drew my Manalithe to put me in-range of Fireball-ing him to death.  I was just praying he wouldn't equip the Worldslayer and reset the game again (although I did still have an Elixir of Immortality to draw at some point).  Forunately, he didn't, and i untapped and killed him with said Fireball.  The moral of the story is, even when Worldslayer might be good, it's still fucking awful.

P.S. it should be mythic.