Sirens

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween event last evening.  Up here in Barrie, the weather was windy, cool, and intermittent rain.  We should have went to OMG! Games last night who were having a midnight release party for Commander 2013 - but - we handed out Halloween candy and watched scary movies instead.  We will however be heading out tonight for Friday Night Magic with a budget red deck to change things up a bit.

Anywhoos - let's yatter about today's post title - Sirens - which we will get to in a moment. We've seen quite a few game tables absolutely piled with tokens, whether they were cat tokens from Ajani, Caller of the Pride, soldier tokens from Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Elemental tokes whether from Young Pyromancer or Master of Waves.  Thank goodness we do not have anthems like Honor of the Pure or Intangible Virtue.  There are a good number of board wipers in standard (perhaps nothing as elegant and easy as Wrath of God) such as Planar Cleansing, Supreme Verdict and other conditional ones such as Anger of the Gods or Golgari Charm.

We here at MTG Realm love unpopular / marginally playable cards which can, with the right build, take advantage of the metagame.  To this end, we had a look at Shipwreck Singer to nerf the numerous tokens we've been seeing lately at our kitchen table and FNM event.  Before we go any further - fun fact time - there only two Sirens every printed by WotC.  First though - what's a siren ? 

Alluring Siren - She lures victims with promises of flesh, captures them in a net of deceit, and destroys them in the embrace of the sea.

Shipwreck Singer - Her melody melds death and beauty with such artistry that even the gods weep to hear it.

In Homer's Odyssey, Circe warns Odysseus about the dangers at sea, principal amongst them, the Sirens inhabiting the rocks isles of Sirenum scopuli. Similarly, Jason and the Argonauts faced the same dangers. Short of stuffing our ears with wax, there is not much to be done about the bewitching songs luring an honest seaman (hehehe) to their watery grave.  To this end, we are very interested in having Shipwreck Singer (with that most epic card art from Daarken) lure those soldier or elemental tokens in closer and crashing them with a semi-global -1/-1.  We just now have to flesh out an appropriate blue / black control shell and then take it for a spin for a few games.
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G/W Aggro

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

For today's post, we wanted to have a look at a typical post- Return to Ravnica Selesnya mid-range aggro build.  We did have an opportunity to get in a few games to test this and determined that it requires a bit of reworking before we feel comfortable to pilot this at a Friday Night Magic event.  We will also need to pick up one or two extra cards from MTG Mint Card before we feel better about it as well.

Anywhoos - Let's tear through the deck list . . .

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37 Spells
4x Arbor Elf
4x Avacyn's Pilgrim
3x Rancor
4x Call of the Conclave
4x Selesnya Charm
3x Druid's Deliverance
3x Parallel Lives
2x Trostani, Selesyna's Voice
3x Slime Molding
2x Garruk, Primal Hunter
2x Thragtusk
2x Divine Deflection
1x Armada Wurm

23 Lands
10x Forest
5x Plains
4x Sunpetal Grove
2x Temple Garden
2x Grove of the Guardian
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We felt that the mana base of 23 lands is not too bad - we do have 8 mana dorks really helped to get things off the ground.  Some players feel that your life total should be a resource but we are a bit shy about that and have only two shock lands.  Grove of the Guardian is a beast but did not want to run more than two as well as we want this to go off late game for the fatties - 5 mana and two critters to tap to get an 8/8 is very good - especially if you can get this token to populate.  We are still undecided about Gavony Township to get extra counters on critters.

This deck is all about generating tokens - not the 1/1 spirit tokens last season but something a bit more substatial - you really want to sink that mana in populating a fatty, not a chump blocker.  Druid's Deliverance is one of the least expensive populate spells and we've picked this up over Rootborn (we may change our mind latter though), and having Parallel Lives just turns up the token volume midgame to make each of your turns more threatening.  Garruk was invited to the party as it has two very relevant token abilities as well as slick card draw should your game start to stall.  Armada Wurm is just the stone-cold nutz - five mana for 10-power over two critters (avec trample!) is sweet.

Call of the Conclave is awesome here and Selesnya Charm provides a nice multi-function instant - critter token, pump 'n' trample or fatty removal is on the menu here.  Rancor, we feel is one of best one-drop spells in the standard environment at the moment, providing you have the supporting cards to run with it.

Trostani and Thragtusk is simply critical life gain given the metagame at the moment.  This hopefully negates early damage from the popular B/x Golgari Zombie builds.  One particular threat that this life gain will not prepare you for is the very popular Olivia Voldaren.  We suggest you fill your sideboards with the likes of Plummet to kill her off quick.

There's a hole in the mana curve here and we feel that Slime Molding fits the bill.  Any spell with 'X' in the mana cost should be taken seriously (think of Bonfire of the Damned) and think the Slimeball here is underated.  It can be dropped late game and is a very good target for populate and Parallel Lives.  The other 'X' spell here is Divine Deflection and is included for the sole reason that we are sneaky and no-one expects a Spanish Inquisition.

Righto - Your Turn -
Where is your G/W aggro build right now - drop us a comment.
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FNM Report 2-24-2012

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

It is not very often that we stay for the full evening of Friday Night Magic as we unfortunately have some other obligations to attend to. Typically, we play the first two or perhaps three matches at our local WPN Games store, OMG! Games and Collectibles here in Barrie, Ontario and then have to take off. This last Friday was however an exception and we stayed until the bitter (approximately midnight) and took in the full 5 rounds of matches slinging our favourite new Magic the Gathering cards in our favourite format, standard constructed.

We are rather pleased that we did stay longer as not only did we finally get our paws on a Friday Night Magic foil promo card (this month is Despise) but also did not too badly in our matches against some of the club's very best players. We also collected an additional 15 Planeswalker Points for the evening. We went on to 5th place in a field of 32 players with 1 match loss and 4 wins with our W/B Token Deck.

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Our first match was against David N who won rather handily in two games with an Esper Control build. In both games, we were just trying to catch up after a series of counter spells. Having our 'anthem' enchantments blown up really did not help our cause at all either.

The second match was against Zach K, a new player who had just started playing. Zach was playing a Red Deck wins featuring Grim Lavamancer, Chandra's Phoenix, Stormblood Berserker, Volt Charge, Shrine of Burning Rage, andIncinerate. We were able to get past all the burn and field a small army of pumped up Human tokens thanks to Increasing Devotion which we also were able to cast again with flashback.

The third match, against Dan L was rather interesting. Dan is a great player and we love the home-brews he brings to game with. Unfortunately we can't really recall very well what he was playing but do think that after Dan fine tunes it, great things may be expected.

In the fourth match, we were pitted against Matt S who also fielded an Esper Control build. We did take the match in two but it was a very tight race in both games - the second one especially. We took the second game after we were able to stick four anthems (2 Intangible Virtues and 2 Honor of the Pures) in play followed by an Increasing Devotion.

For the fifth and last match, we were paired with Taylor W who had brought along a Mono-Green Aggro build featuring solid Mana-ramp, Young Wolf, Strangleroot Geist, Thrun, the Last Troll, and Vorapede. Taylor had just put the deck together earlier in the day and (thankfully) did not have an opportunity to tweak it against the ever evolving metagame. Had there been some Overrun trample spells in the mix we seriously think we would not have won.

Anwwhoos -stay tuned to MTG Realm - tomorrow, wel'll give a run down of the Esper Control archetype which are doing rather nicely at most casual and competitive circles.
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Also of note - Great news from MTG Mint Card - They have restocked singles on one of our favourite recent sets - CONFLUX ! This is the set which brought you such notable cards as Noble Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary, Progenitus among others. Click on over before they sell out.
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DKA B-W Tokens

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We have a series of posts over the next few days in which we provide a decklist of real Magic the Gathering cards the group has collected and present to you, the reader for a critical review. We hope to take said finished build and slay the local meta-game at the next FMN. Oh - When we say critical review, we mean constructive suggestions and not stuff like, yo dude - your dog is fugly - that sort of thingy.


Anywhooos - first build up for your review Elspeth Tirel, beautiful mysterious knight from Alara (and Mirrodin) goes on this date with Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and the pair promptly has tokens, and loads of 'em. Righto - here's the first build - post Dark Ascension B/W Tokens -


38 Spells
4 x Doomed Traveler
3 x Shrine of Loyal Legions
4 x Intangible Virtue
4 x Gather the Townsfolk
3 x Go for the Throat
3 x Altar's Reap
4 x Lingering Souls
4 x Midnight Haunting
3 x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
3 x Elspeth Tirel
2 x Sun Titan

23 Lands
2 x Vault of the Archangel
2 x Evolving Wilds
3 x Isolated Chapel
4 x Swamp
12 x Plains

Sideboard
3 x Tragic Slip
3 x Revoke Existence
3 x Oblivion Ring
3 x Divine Offering
3 x Dismember

Solid enough of a start but only one 1-drop. No Honor of the Pure here as we thought that Sorin's little 1/1 vampire tokens would not benefit as well as the Myr tokens from Shrine of Loyal Legions. Alter's Reap provides a cheap card draw and GftT is our spot removal. Best uncommon from DKA is Lingering Souls and we've paired this up with Midnight Haunting.

For the moment, we have 3 Elspeth and 3 Sorin in here. Following is Sun Titan which can and will bring back almost every card in the build. Vault of the Archangel is this deck's Gavony Township. The lands are continued to be tweaked to provide maximum effeciency.

UPDATE : Pop on over to our buddy Vergil's (Vergil's Magic Emporium) site for a very decent summary of this deck archetype he posted on the same day as us. He's been writing about MTG since 2010 and is much less derpy than us.

Righto, your turn.
We admit we are not the best brewer and given our love of the casual game, will often include cards because of righteous artwork. Your job, if you so choose, is to take this build and provide improvements so it's not sad panda time at FNM.

Lastly,

If your are looking to pimp up your deck beyond just having a number of foils and / or alternate art / promos in your stack, we suggest you check out MTG Mint Card which has excellent prices not only on foils but Chinese language cards - which looks Kung-Fu Kewl.
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