:Kill the Wizard First

or, “I heard you like Standard decks, so I put a Moat in your Caw Blade so you can Brainstorm while you Squadron Hawk.”

For the last year and a half, I’ve been playing 43 Lands in Legacy (with a short break to play Junk Depths during the Misstep era). I had a hell of a lot of fun playing it, even if my opponents often wanted to murder me, but it’s not actually that powerful a deck, it folds to most unfair linear strategies, and it just wasn’t putting up results. So, reluctantly, I put away the Tabernacle and started looking for something else.

I wanted three things: I wanted to play broken stuff, counter spells, and draw cards.

For a while I experimented with a Stoneblade shell. It didn’t draw enough cards, so obviously I jammed Ancestral Visions and Skeletal Scrying in there, because that’s what one does, right? As some of you may have already guessed, this is a terrible plan and it ends in tears.

Did some Counter-Thopters testing, but a significant majority of games came down to keeping an Ensnaring Bridge lock, and if I was going to do that, I might as well go back to Lands, because at least then you get to crush their hopes under a recurring Ghost Quarter. Also, seriously, cards. I want to draw them. All of them. Not sit there Topping and paying mana to make Flying Men.

Anyway, I did eventually find a deck I liked. The list is a straight copy of Carsten Kotter’s Caw Cartel, with some sideboard changes for local metagame reasons, and it does everything I want in a control deck.

Caw Cartel

Permanents (17) 2 Snapcaster Mage 4 Squadron Hawk 2 Vendilion Clique 2 Moat 2 Oblivion Ring 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor Spells (24) 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 2 Preordain 4 Force of Will 3 Counterspell 3 Spell Snare 4 Swords to Plowshares Lands (20) 5 Island 2 Plains 4 Flooded Strand 1 Marsh Flats 4 Polluted Delta 3 Tundra 1 Karakas

Sideboard (15) 3 Path to Exile 2 Spell Pierce 2 Surgical Extraction 2 Wrath of God 1 Flusterstorm 1 Mindbreak Trap 1 Enlightened Tutor 1 Ethersworn Canonist 1 Back to Basics 1 Sword of Fire and Ice

The loosest card in the board is Sword of Fire and Ice, which I admit is a pet card of mine, but it’s in there as attempt three in a series to improve the matchup versus Esper Stoneblade, because frankly, Lingering Souls has been giving me fits. As with previous attempts, it did not get the job done (we’ll get to that). I keep glancing suspiciously at my Underground Seas, because Engineered Plague and maybe Planar Void are starting to look really compelling. A third color would also make Engineered Explosives an option (I dislike EE with only two colors). The risk of destabilizing the mana base versus Wasteland decks is very real, though, and it makes Back to Basics a worse sideboard card, so I haven’t taken the plunge yet. If I did, it would probably be -2 Island, +1 Swamp, +1 Underground Sea.

This list has been pretty good to me the last few weeks at the small (usually 6-10 players) Saturday Legacy events Majestix runs, and it put me in the top 8 at a SCG Invitiation Qualifier at MonStore a few weeks back, where I punted the first round after the cut with the loosest one land, Brainstorm keep of all time, because, and this is an important fact to note, I am terrible. We’ll come back to that as well.

Anyway, off to LA.

Round 1: Eder, Sneak and Show

Game 1

I lose the roll, but I already know what deck he’s on. We both keep 7 and I lead with Island into Preordain, with a Force in hand and a grip full of blue spells. This turns out to be a dumb idea when he runs out a Sneak Attack with Daze backup, and I suffer a well-deserved thrashing at the hands of T2 Hentacle Attack and T3 Prog Rock. I scribble down “Play around Daze” and underline it a few times for good measure.

Sideboard: -4 Squadron Hawk, -1 Elspeth, +2 Spell Pierce, +1 Flusterstorm, +2 Surgical Extraction. Trading out the card advantage of the birds for more interaction on the stack. Extraction is to punish Intuition plays.

Game 2

We both keep 7, my hand has Karakas and a bunch of blue spells so I feel pretty good about it. We fight over an early Vendilion Clique, which I don’t actually care that much about but I want his hand empty, and he can’t let me have a Clique with Karakas on board. He goes for a Sneak Attack, which I stop with a Snapcast Pierce and start beating down. My first Jace gets binned when he Dazes it because I’d rather leave Karakas up; the second one sticks and I ride Jace and Snapcaster beats to victory.

Game 3

I keep 7 with Karakas, he goes to 6 and I just sit back and counter a lot of spells while playing lands and cantripping. He goes for a Show and Tell, I Clique in response and see the dynamic duo: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Blightsteel Colossus. Karakas up, I don’t care about the Spaghetti Monster and and bottom Blighty. Obviously he rips the Blood Moon off the Clique. I sigh heavily and roll my eyes, but have two basic Islands to keep a Counterspell up against any further shenanigans, and Clique + Snapcaster beat down.

1-0 (2-1)

Round 2: Vidi, Esper Stoneblade

Game 1

I win the roll and but mull to five, he keeps 7 and makes Lingering Souls into Umezawa’s Jitte with countermagic backup all the way. Not winning this game.

Sideboard: -2 Force of Will, -1 Moat, -2 Oblivion Ring, -1 Elspeth, +2 Spell Pierce, +1 Wrath of God, +1 Enlightened Tutor, +1 Back to Basics, +1 Sword of Fire and Ice. I’m not certain that’s what I actually boarded, but it’s close. I’d rather have Pierce than Force in this match-up (-2 Force, +2 Pierce is something I like a lot in blue-blue fights) and I’m just sort of shotgunning answers to Lingering Souls to see what works.

Game 2

We both keep 7. Turn one Inquisition of Kozilek hits my Squadron Hawk, my cantrips brick, and he hits Lingering Souls into Jace on time. I never get back in the game and move to scoop phase after a few turns.

Stupid Lingering Souls.

1-1 (2-3)

I grab some caffeine and play some Vintage to recover.

Round 3: Ryan, Reanimator

Game 1

I go to 6 on the play, he keeps a slow 7. I run out a Clique at end of turn, and now there are two pages in my notebook with “play around DAZE” written in large, angry letters. One day I will stop walking into that stupid spell. He has infinite Thoughtseizes, but not only do I have infinite Brainstorms, my Brainstorms are fucking amazing. I rip another Clique and every possible counterspell right on time and the legendary fae troupe clocks him out.

Sideboard: -4 Squadron Hawks, -1 Elspeth, +2 Spell Pierce, +2 Surgical Extraction, +1 Flusterstorm

Game 2

I cantrip into a pile of counterspells, have the Swords for his turn two Jin-Gitaxias, and Jace him out of the game.

2-1 (5-3)

Round 4: Trevor, Maverick

Game 1

We both keep 7, I’m on the draw. I send a few Moms farming, but he forces down a Knight of the Reliquary and I start a phase of the game I call “Dear Merciful Card Gods, Find Me A Moat”. Spoiler: They don’t.

Sideboard: -1 Moat, -3 Spell Snare, -1 Jace, +3 Path to Exile, +2 Wrath of God

Game 2

We both keep 7. Having now stacked my deck with infinite removal, I proceed to play all of it — twice (Snapcaster) — and Jace him out.

Game 3

He goes to 5. I keep land, fetch, fetch, Brainstorm, Moat, Swords, Force, proving that I am good at Magic. Brainstorm finds me a Snapcaster Mage and a Counterspell, proving that it is a sweet, sweet card. I make my fourth land, drop the Moat on time, and hide behind it with a hand full of blue spells while Jace does what he does best.

I’m starting to think Moat is not a very fair card.

3-1 (7-4)

Round 5:

With four 9-pointers and four 12-pointers, everyone draws in. I go get some Poquito Mas.

3-1-1 (7-4)

Quarterfinals: Alex, UWR Stoneblade

Game 1

On the play, he keeps seven and I have a loose, land-light 6. It’s a pretty sketchy keep, but it has blue land, Brainstorm, and a fetch, so it’s better than going to five. Predictably, I stall on land and get wrecked by a Grim Lavamancer and Jace.

Sideboard: -1 Moat, -2 Force of Will, -2 Oblivion Ring, -1 Jace, +2 Spell Pierce, +1 Flusterstorm, +1 Enlightened Tutor, +1 Back to Basics, +1 Sword of Fire and Ice.

Game 2

His turn to go to six, I keep the perfect 7. He goes for an early Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull, I drop the Moat, along with an ET for Back to Basics (which he successfully Forces). He dials up Jace, I call in Elspeth to beat him down, and from that point Elspeth was racing the top of his deck as he fetched and cantripped to find an answer to Moat that was not forthcoming.

Game 3

What should have happened: We both do some early Pondering, then he goes for a Stoneforge Mystic. I Snare it, he has the Red Elemental Blast, so it resolves fetching Batterskull. I hit it with Swords end of turn, he Forces. I untap, draw the Spell Pierce I’d skillfully left atop my deck, run out a main phase Snapcaster for StP with Spell Pierce backup, strand the Batterskull in his hand, and ride a Jace to victory.

What actually happened: We both do some early Pondering, then he goes for a Stoneforge Mystic. I look at my hand, look at the top of my deck, look at my hand, and realize I’d taken the wrong card off Ponder for no reason except that I’m terrible, and this Spell Pierce I’m glaring at cannot counter a Stoneforge Mystic. So I go for the Swords, which he Forces, untap, draw the Spell Snare I’d skillfully left atop my deck, run out a main phase Snapcaster which gets Red Blasted, and die to a Batterskull.

3-2-1 (8-6)

Another top 8 punt. Eventually I’ll stop forgetting how to play Magic the moment the Swiss rounds are over. I spent the rest of the top 8 playing Vintage, so really, we both won. Granted, Alex won in the sense of finishing higher and getting better prizes, which I think is probably a superior form of winning even though Vintage is always totally sweet, but I finished my set of Intuitions, so I won’t complain too much.

As always, big thanks to Lori and the Knight-Ware regulars for being awesome and promoting eternal in SoCal.

Posted by James to Card Games (On Motorcycles) | add a comment

Alright, let’s talk about Magic: The Gathering.

Yes, I’m going to try again to revive the blog. The D&D group I had together has proven fairly inconsistent in terms of actually getting a group together every week, so I may as well admit that my primary hobby activity these days continues to be MtG, and I want to blog about it, so it’s officially on the table as a topic.

Last weekend I was at the Star City Open in LA. Now seems like a good time to get out of Zendikar block before the pre-rotation rush starts, a theory aided by my general lack of interest in Standard at the moment, so I spent most of the day setting up trades. Saturday morning, I was about 25 cards short of the Legacy deck I’ve been working on. A full day of trading later, I was about 8 short, so I shrugged, sold all the rest of my Zendikar block cards (and a few high-value but difficult to trade rares) to Star City and used the credit to fill out the deck and pick up a few staples I wanted anyway.

Thus equipped, I set forth on Sunday ready to play Lands.dec. Which I did, terribly, but hey, first day with a new deck. I’ve been grinding out games at the shop since then and there has been some improvement.

Also fun: I’m participating in an online Vintage (well, Classic, since it will be on MODO) Rotisserie draft. With five players battling over the good black cards, I’ve pretty clearly staked out a claim to artifacts, with picks along the lines of Mishra’s Workshop, Memory Jar, Goblin Welder, and Smokestack (one player did go Vault, Key, so there’s some artifact competition, and he already stole the Trinket Mage that was rightfully mine, but such is life). We shall see how events progress as the picks continue.

Posted by James to Card Games (On Motorcycles) | add a comment

Stop the presses and ring the bells, I’m back.

After a long post-move hiatus of World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering, with a few brief interludes in the realm of 4e (verdict: I still don’t like it for anything more than a 1-off) I have a game again, and more to the point, I’m feeling excited about tabletop games again.

Session 1 of “Built on Sand” kicked off on Monday. I’m running fairly vanilla 3.5 (including psionics and Tome of Battle), setting is Dark Sun (set just after the fall of Kalak). The group is a druid, a warblade, a rogue, and a preserver wizard, and the initial hook is that the city of Nibenay is hiring short term mercenaries and they’ve all hired on. I have some concerns about overall tone (for example, the druid seems to think he’s a hot-blooded action anime protagonist), but we had a fun little bandit encounter to refresh everyone on how combat works, there’s a fat, tedious city official to escort (and complain about), and I’m hoping that the players will start to buy in more on the mood of the setting. It would help if I could consistently remember the dozen-odd Dark Sun smerps that substitute for prey animals, mounts, and beasts of burden, but such are the perils of settings. Maybe I’ll put them on my GM screen.

The big downside so far is that my tiny SoCal apartment can’t host the game, so we’re doing it at the local cards and comics shop, which means distractions galore. That’s not my favorite situation, but if I have to run a game that way, I’d rather it be action/survival then, say, atmospheric horror or Big Idea space opera.

I will say, after several successive D&D games that might be (generously) considered on the high end of the power curve, it’s nice to be able to eyeball encounters right out of the book again.

Posted by James to Built on Sand | add a comment

For some reason, it’s taken me forever to get around to ordering Eclipse Phase. Anyway, that’s rectified and I’ll have a review up once I get it.

I’m down on fantasy this week, so bring on the sci-fi! Maybe I’ll see if I can convert some of the local cardflippers. Which brings up the vital question: Trinity, Rogue Trader, or Traveller?

Posted by James to Just Chatter | 10 comments

Speak of the devil. I may get my wish.

Posted by James to Bits of Shiny | add a comment

I’ve been out in California for two months and I still don’t have a gaming group, except for weekly CCG stuff. And Magic is fun, but it’s not what I want to write about here.

I still don’t care about 4e. And while I think it’s awesome that people like old-school D&D and have a whole revival going on, that’s not for me either. I want a new edition of Nobilis, damnit.

White Wolf is moving/has moved to an almost entirely PDF-driven business model, which may be fine for them, but I hate PDFs.

Actually, here’s something I can get a rant on about. Spotted in an Exalted thread on RPG.net about an alternate take on Cecelyne, the following from StephanLS:

No need for apologies! While I do aim to please, I don’t aim to please everyone, and expecting to would be silly of me. If this interpretation of Cecelyne doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work, nothing more needs to be said.

Fair enough. Just be aware that Mage taught me and a number of other prominent White Wolf posters that ideological division within a fan community creates poisonous social conflicts, and so we work to eradicate deviant takes on setting elements such as this to prevent them from causing long-standing arguments or, worse, leaking into canon via author persuasion or the elevation of fans to authorial positions. So it’s not a matter of “nothing more needs to be said” — my position is this take on Cecelyne is both bad in itself and potentially harmful to the Exalted fan community as a whole if allowed to gain any traction. By championing it, you set yourself as my enemy.

To quote QC: What the hell ass balls?

Arguing about Mage: The Ascension was the point of the game. (Tangent: You don’t prevent ascended fandom by telling anyone with an alternate take on the setting that they’re your Special Internet Mortal Foe, you do it by having a line developer that knows what he’s doing.) I love Mage arguments, and the fact that they still get traction over the painfully uninteresting Mage: Dudes from Atlantis reminds me why it’s my favorite tabletop game of all time.

A sign of a healthy setting is that it’s open to drift and discussion, and a sign of a good GM is drifting that setting to support the game they’re running.

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 6 comments

Opinion poll. In an Unspecified Medievalesque Fantasy RPG, an average combat encounter (not including large set-pieces or arc-ending showdowns) is best when it lasts:

• Under five minutes because non-combat stuff is more interesting.
• Under five minutes because our whole team are ninjas and we shivved everything during the surprise round.
• 10-20 minutes.
• 20-40 minutes.
• Most of a session.
• All of a session.
• Don’t touch the minis, we’ll finish next time.

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 4 comments

Busy looking at apartments, getting moving quotes, etc. Not a lot of time for games at the moment.

But was thinking earlier about ways to combine CCG concepts of mana curve and tempo with RPG gameplay; something like a D&D prepared spellcaster combined with a ramp-up mechanic.

More on this to follow.

Posted by James to Theory and Practice | 2 comments

Catalyst Game Labs, who currently license the Shadowrun and Battletech IP, and additionally publish Eclipse Phase and CthulhuTech, are having some problems.

The official statement:

The result was that business funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation.

This hit RPG.net and Dumpshock last night via this post, which painted a considerably darker picture, and cited the missing funds as totaling $850,000.

It’s not good news either way, but hopefully they stay open and the freelancers get paid.

Posted by James to The Industry | add a comment

Sunday I ran a Cthulhutech one-off titled “Fear and Loathing on the Plateau of Leng”. It’s something of a last hurrah for me, almost certainly the last chance I’ll have to run a game here before I move in May. Also one of the larger games I’ve run in a while, with seven players, and certainly the longest single session I’ve GMed in quite a few years.

CT is a sci-fi game with Lovecraft trappings — humanity and its Giant Anime Robots vs. Migou space invaders vs. Things That Should Not Be (and their cultists). There’s a lot of truly shameless theft/homage (depending on how charitably you read it) from a few well-known anime series, though most of them are cited, so you can’t say you don’t know what you’re getting into. Macross + Evangelion + Guyver vs. Cthulhu actually turns out to be a fairly workable setting, at least at the level we were playing at, where I threw out all the rules I couldn’t remember and ran the game like an action movie.
Read the rest of ‘Cthulhutech Report’ »

Posted by James to Tabletop Dispatches | add a comment