The Snow Storm in Edison

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

We've gotta say that we are loving the new Magic: the Gathering standard environment at the moment - the 'best' new decks have not yet been distilled down to a choice of only one or two (boring!) builds.  There is a large variety of different strategies, different colours and different playstyles which are all being rewarded at the moment.  As we've said a hundred times, we here at MTG Realm are more 'kitchen table' / FNM players where we'll try as many as the new cards as possible because it's fun, not because we want to win.  Having said that, getting burned every game kinda sucks so we do bring along less 'crazy' deck brews to the local gaming store.

We also look at what the good players are bringing along to tournaments.  One of the most recent tournaments took place during the most awful snow storm event in recent memory last weekend in New Jersey at the StarCity Games Open standard event.  Several weeks ago, we kind a fell in love with Boros Reckoner when it was previewed.  We dropped over to MTG Mint Card to get our pre-orders in and for some reason simply did not get this onto our purchase list - we're kicking ourselves now - Check out these two nice looking lists from NJ featuring the Wreckoner which took 6tth and 9th place.

Boros Aggro, 6th place, Clayton Gereffi  
Creatures (27)
    4 Ash Zealot
    4 Boros Reckoner
    4 Hellrider
    3 Lightning Mauler
    1 Pyreheart Wolf
    4 Rakdos Cackler
    1 Stonewright
    4 Stromkirk Noble
    2 Zealous Conscripts
Lands (24)
    15 Mountain
    4 Clifftop Retreat
    4 Sacred Foundry
    1 Slayers' Stronghold
Spells (9)
    2 Boros Charm
    4 Searing Spear
    3 Pillar of Flame 
Sideboard
    4 Reckless Waif
    3 Volcanic Strength
    2 Boros Charm
    2 Skullcrack
    3 Mizzium Mortars
    1 Pillar of Flame
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Mono-White Humans, Jared Blumberg, 9th Place 

Creatures (33)
    4 Boros Reckoner
    4 Champion of the Parish
    4 Elite Inquisitor
    3 Fiend Hunter
    4 Knight of Glory
    4 Silverblade Paladin
    3 Sublime Archangel
    4 War Falcon
    3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
    23 Plains
Spells (4)
    4 Blind Obedience
Sideboard
    2 Witchbane Orb
    1 Fiend Hunter
    2 Nevermore
    2 Oblivion Ring
    4 Rest in Peace
    4 Faith's Shield
 
 
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Finally,

Just for the record, here is the rather diverse field of builds at the StarCityGames Standard Open from last weekend in Edison, New Jersey.

Jund Midrange    1st     William Postlethwait
Esper Control    2nd     Chris Marshall  
Naya Zoo    3rd     Richard Nguyen  
Junk Midrange    4th     John Pietrowski  
Jund Aggro    5th     Ty Holden  
Boros Aggro    6th     Clayton Gereffi  
Naya Humans    7th     Paul Brown  
Boros Aggro    8th     Dan Walton
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New Quest

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G'Day folks and Happy Tuesday,

Across Ontario and many other provinces in Canada-Land, we were celebrating Family Day while south of the border, our American cousins were celebrating President's Day. President's Day just seems so much cooler than spending time with the fam (just kidd'n - we had a massive breakfast buffet and were quite glad to have worn our buffet pants for the occasion).

Anywhoos -
To business. We have a couple of things to get off the plate today - first up a look at Frank Karsten's mono-white Quest deck from Paris and then to the announcement in today's Magic Arcana - another Duel Deck. Strap in and let's go . . .

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Magic Pro Tour Hall of Famer Frank Karsten shares his Mono-White Quest Standard deck from Pro Tour Paris that is all about getting Argentum Armor onto a cheap creature. A deck list will be posted later this weekend. Frank came in around 47th place, which considering how vast the field was - this is not to shabby.

Frank had with great wit, called his deck "Car-Go" (after the ubiquitous rise of the 'Caw-Go' decks) as he built it in the back of his buddy's car while they were driving from the Netherlands to Paris.

Here's the vid from WoTC ->

So let's have another look as to what's in it . . .


60 Cards 23 Lands : 4 Marsh Flats, 4 Arid Mesa, 11 Plains, 4 Contested War Zone
31 Creatures : 4 Glint Hawk, 4 Memnite, 4 Ornithopter, 4 Accorder Paladin, 3 Squadron Hawk, 4 Signal Pest, 4 Steppe Lynx, 4 Kor Skyfisher
6 Other Spells : 4 Quest for the Holy Relic, 2 Argentum Armor
15 Sideboard Cards : 1 Squadron Hawk, 2 Jinxed Idol, 1 Journey to Nowhere, 4 Kor Firewalker, 3 Refraction Trap, 1 Sword of Feast and Famine, 1 Sword of Body and Mind, 2 Divine Offering








This is a great deck - it is within the budget of most casual players - even us. We already had something very similar to this ahead of the release of Mirrodin Besieged and had modified our existing deck when MBS came out - we sideboarded some extra equipment and dropped in the new Signal Pest. We went back to the drawing board and copied Karsten's exact build and took it to our casual standard metagame and was promptly chewed up and spat out after several hours against a variety of decks at our kitchen table. We might think of taking this to FNM but are shy. Anyways - like we may have said in the past, what works on a Pro-Tour circuit may fail in an epic way at the kitchen table. Pro-Tour decks are designed to win against popular archetypal builds at the tournament.

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Next up -

It's vengeance versus guile to decide the fate of a shattered plane.
Duel Decks: Ajani vs. Bolas

The leonin Ajani Goldmane scours the shards of Alara with a single thought in mind: revenge. Filled with rage at the murder of his brother, Jazal, Ajani searches for his killer. Leaving no stone unturned, his wrath grows along with his power as a Planeswalker, leading him to an ultimate showdown with the Multiverse's master manipulator. Nicol Bolas is beginning to feel effects of the eons of time and knows it will take the mana of an entire plane to rejuvenate his ancient power and set his new schemes in motion. As he expertly maneuvers the pieces of his interplanar game into place, he encounters an indomitable will bent on retribution. The battle of Alara's Maelstrom is in your hands. Determine the fate of an entire plane and the outcome of an epic conflict between two rival Planeswalkers.

Deck Design and Development: Chris Millar and Mark Gottlieb
Languages Available: English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish
Release Date: September 2, 2011
MSRP: $19.99
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And finally -
We always look forward to see where players may be taking their game next and follow popular cards. Here is a very odd / interesting list from MTG Mint Card showing the Mirrodin Besieged Top 10 selling cards as of Feb 2011 . . .

1. Psychosis Crawler
2. Black Sun's Zenith
3. Thopter Assembly
4. Contested War Zone
5. Phyrexian Vatmother
6. Bonehoard
7. Creeping Corrosion
8. White Sun's Zenith
9. Mitotic Manipulation
10. Inkmoth Nexus

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Soul Sisters

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Good Day MTG peeps,

We wanted to yatter about the local meta game today which kind of went head over heels for that white weenie life-gain archetype using the M11 Ajani's Pridemate and Soul Warden / Soul's Attendant. We did have this sort of deck put together within two weeks after M11 came out and it seemed that everyone and their monkey were playing it. If there is something we really do not like, it is playing a stoopid mirror-match. To this end, we will consign ourselves to construct a deck which hopefully wreck havoc on everyone's fav mono-white life-gain deck.


First things first, let's yatter about the life-gain deck. This deck list was put togehter by MTG pro-player Conley Woods who went 3-1 in U.S nationals. The deck is named Soul Sisters for some obvious reasons - the 4 Soul Wardens and 4 Soul's Attendants in the deck. Basically, it runs 8 copies of a 1 mana creature that allows him to gain life for every creature that enters the field. Gaining life is pretty sweet in this build given the fact that Conley also ran 4 Ajani's Pridemates and 4 Serra Ascendants. Essentially, this deck is based off the concept "Life is power." The rapid tempo in which this deck gains life directly relates to just how powerful and effective his creatures will be.

Ajani’s Pridemate typically gets to rather an alarming size due to the fact that most of the decks in Standard play a lot of creatures to trigger the soul sisters.

Also, Pridemate can get big quickly. For example, turn one Soul Warden, turn two Pridemate, a few more creatures from you and your opponent could turn the Pridemate into a 6/6 or 7/7 creature by turn three which not a pleasant thing to be looking at across the game table.

The life gain from the sisters also helps you beat creature decks because you gain so much life that it’s hard for your opponent to kill you. Also, Serra Ascendant becomes a 6/6 pretty easily against those decks if you have one or two sisters on the battlefield. For example, against Mythic, Conley went turn one Soul Warden, turn two Soul Warden and Kabira Crossroads, and then turn three he cast 2 Ascendants that were both 6/6 (his opponent had played two creatures).

Here's the list . . .

Creatures (24)
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul's Attendant
4x Serra Ascendant
4x Ranger of Eos
4x Kor Firewalker

Land (23)
15x Plains
4x Kabira Crossroads
4x Tectonic Edge

Spells (13)
4x Brave the Elements
3x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Oblivion Ring
4x Survival Cache

Sideboard (15)
2x Celestial Purge
2x Oblivion Ring
1x War Priest of Thune
1x Sun Titan
2x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
3x Path to Exile
4x Luminarch Ascension

Some of the challenges in beating this deck . . .

I have a Mythic Conscription build as well as a Cunning Sparkmage / Naya Collar build - either of these may have to face down a Linvala, Keeper of Silence in the life-gain side-board. Also, Path to Exile, Oblivion Ring, and Celestial Purge can deal with many of the threats which we are thinking about sliding in a buiild. Perhaps we double the volume of pingers in the mix, throw in some removal, etc.

One option is to get a Leyline of Punishment on board. Sure the last line of the card that says damage can't be prevented may be good but what is golden is the line before it which states Players can't gain life. So do you pack a four of and just mulligan until it is in your opening hand so you can play it for free?

Please fill our head with some ideas as to what we should be bringing to FNM - drop us a comment - we would love to hear from the lot of ya.

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Building An EDH

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EDH ? You may have heard of it - this is an acronym for 'Elder Dragon Highlander', a fun singleton constructed format meant for multi-player games, but can also be played head to head. We became interested in this format (just a week or so ago) because we are all about casual magic play and we also happened to have a bunch of older cards on hand collecting dust. The beauty of this game is the vast range of choices one has - more specifically, thousands of choices. The other great thing about EDH is that one does not need to collect expensive deck sets - just 'one-offs' which may be easily done ever time you open up a booster pack or peruse the dollar-rare bin at your MTG store.

We had scraped together a very simple deck (which, with your assistance we will improve) and had our very first game just yesterday. We were, of course, slaughtered BUT, not only did we have fun, we deeply appreciated the other players were very helpful in teaching us how to play and provide some tips to us. Before we show you what EDH deck we pulled together for our very first game, here is a brief summary of how to play this game.


An EDH deck must have a legendary creature as it's "general," and can be built using only colorless cards or cards of the general's colors. Note that split and hybrid cards count as both colors for deck construction purposes, and spells with off-color activated abilities cannot be played unless the off-color activated abilities are the general's color. Any card which generates multiple colors of mana cannot generate mana outside the colors of it's general. If a card would generate mana outside it's general's colors, it generates colorless mana instead. Players may choose any legendary creature (there is over 300 choices for you) as their general. The general is placed face-up in the command zone before mulligans are declared.


An EDH deck must contain exactly 100 cards, general included, typically with no sideboards. The cards may consist of Vintage legal cards and with the exception of basic lands, no two cards in the deck may have the same English name. There is a suggested 'banned list' which may be found on www.dragonhighlander.net and your local club may have other cards which may be prohibited to play. Just use Wizards Gatherer card database to seek out the best cards for inclusion in your deck.


EDH gameplay is like normal Magic in most ways, but it varies in a few key aspects. For example, both players start with 40 life instead of the usual 20. This leds to longer games, but they are still quite fun and interactive for both players. Due to the large deck size, players are allowed one "free" mulligan to compensate for any draws your deck may have given you. Your general starts in the 'command zone' - a place legally removed from the game. Anytime you could normally play a creature, you may play your General from the Romved-from-game zone by paying its mana cost. If a general would be put into a graveyard or exile from anywhere, its owner may choose to move it to the command zone instead. Every time your general is played again increases its cost by 2 colourless mana. A player dealt 21 combat damage by a single general loses the game.

Some references for you to read further -
http://forum.dragonhighlander.net/EDH_Forum
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=377

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Here is our premier deck which we hope, with your help, to improve. As mentioned before, there are a lot of choices to be had and we expect this deck will be forever changing as we tweak it or come across awesome cards to include . . .

As you can see, we went very simple with our first deck and developed an mono-white soldier build:

Darien, King of Kjeldor (General), Trusty Machete, Akrasan Squire, Goldmeadow Harrier, Soul Warden, Cenn's Tactician, Elite Vanguard, Coordinated Barrage, Piety Charm, Unified Strike, Brave the Elements, Harm's Way, Path to Exile, Dolmen Gate, Veteran's Armaments, Aven Squire, Ballyrush Banneret, Kazandu Blademaster, Kor Aeronaut, Honor of the Pure, Militia's Pride, Shared Triumph, Pacifism, Weight of Conscience, Temporal Isolation, Journey to Nowhere, Pollen Lullaby, Redeem the Lost, Whispersilk Cloak, Kithkin Zephyrnaut, Veteran Swordsmith, Field Marshal, Intrepid Hero, Premeninet Captain, Oblivion Ring, Mobilization, Prison Term, Oblation, Door of Destinies, Deathrender, Sword of the Paruns, Loxodon Gatekeeper, Benalish Commander, Daru Warchief, Rhox Pikemaster, Enlistment Officer, Kithkin Rabble, Taj-Nar Swordsmith, Armored Asension, Ajani Goldmane, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Resurrection, Catapult Master, Cloudgoat Ranger, Conqueror's Pledge, Captain of the Watch, Crovax, Ascendant Hero, Knight-Captain of Eos, WindbrisK Raptor, Mass Calcify, Martial Coup,
Lands : Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Daru Encampment, Forbidding Watchtower, 36 PLAINS.

Your turn now - if you play EDH or know the older Magic cards, help us out and drop some suggestions in the comments. We will develop a video sometime hopefully before the official Worldwake previews / spoilers get under way to showcase some of the potential improvements.

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What I'm Playing 4

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We are putting Conflux spoilers on the back-burner this post and giving you another post of 'What I'm Playing'. More specifically, this should be called 'What I'm Play-Testing', as this casual MTG deck will not be seeing an FNM until I get it cleaned up a bit more. I am also very interested in hearing your advice on how to tune this up, so please leave a comment.

So, without further ado, may I present the 'Knight*Life' deck.

This mono-white deck contains 66 cards (24 plains, and 42 spells), and has a balance of aggro and control.

First up : I really wanted to develop something around Cradle of Vitality which generates +1 counters whenever the player gains life. To this end, I had included Battlegrace Angel, Kitchen Finks, Knight of Meadowgrain and Goldenglow Moth. In case I needed to force life-gain, I also included Soul's Grace. Personally, I rather like the interaction between Cradle of Vitality and Finks or the Moth.

Secondly : For control, I have included Oblivion Ring, Prison Term (a favourite of mine), and Mass Calcify for late-game removal. Knight-Captain of Eos also affords damage prevention when you sac a soldier. The versatile Elspeth is able to provide these soldier tokens or allow another critter to go aggro and take to the air.

Thirdly : On offence, we have Kinsbaile Cavalier providing double strike to a quartet of Knights (Knight-Captain of Eos, Knight of Meadowgrain and Sigiled Paladin). Altough said quartet are all 2/2, they do pack a punch with either exalter, first strike or double-strike. As mentioned earlier, Elspeth may turn any of these into a flying 5/5 missle.

Anywho, that's it for another edition of 'What I'm Playing'. Remember, drop me a line or provide a comment if you have a suggestion to improve upon this. I've limited this deck to standard play and although there are some amazing additions from Tenth edition for inclusion, I think I will hold off until July, 2009.

Stay tuned for more MTG goodness 'n' spoilers.