15-card Highlander

A lot of the play variants that seem to have the most success are predicated on thinking big. 5-color Magic, with its 250-card decks, had its day in the sun for many years. Nowadays EDH is the casual format of choice, and it involves a cool 100 cards. Doesn't a teetering pile of cardboard sometimes get a little tiresome, though? The hassle shuffling it, the delay of game every time you search for something, the struggle finding room to carry and transport the behemoth... not to mention that the bigger your deck is, the less consistent it is, inevitably leading to long, drawn-out games that can take all afternoon to finish. Wouldn't you rather be able to get a few games in if you can help it? Sometimes the pared-down fun of playing with a 40 card deck in Limited formats can lead to tight gameplay... so why not push that concept to the limit and get some real pared-down decks?

Eye of the Tiger

"Rising up, back on the streets
did my time, took my chances
went the distance
now I'm back on my feet
just a man and his will to survive

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
you must fight just to keep them alive

(chorus)
It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight
rising up to the challenge of our rival
and the last known survivor
stalks his prey in the night
and he's watching us all with the
Eye of the tiger

Face to face, out in the heat
hanging tough, staying hungry
they stack the odds
still we take to the street
for the kill with the skill to survive

(chorus)

Rising up, straight to the top
had the guts, got the glory
went the distance
now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive

(chorus)

Eye of the tiger (hold on a minute...)"

Let's Hear It For Mogg Bombers

My first-ever goblin deck, loosely speaking, existed around the year 2000 - somewhat before dedicated goblin decks were truly viable as a competitive entity. The deck essentially consisted of every card that said "goblin" on it I could find in the 10-cent bins. For a while this meant that the biggest creature in the deck was the 3/2 Goblin Cavaliers, and heaven help you if he dropped while both Goblin Shrine and Goblin Caves were out. Not long before the deck was dismantled and reborn under the newfound legitimacy of Onslaught block, however, there was the addition of a new biggest lunk on the block: the mighty Mogg Bombers.

I pretty soon found out that the Bombers weren't all that. For one thing, they hardly ever functioned as a creature. In the low-power, just-starting-out environment of mediocre critters crashing into each other, generally your opponent would play a creature the next turn and blow him up. If not, well, then I would drop some real nasty tech like Kyren Sniper or Goblin Flotilla and blow my own Mogg Bombers up - because what, I'm going to stop playing creatures in the goblin deck? I guess more often than not I was left wondering why I would work with the Bombers when Lightning Bolt was a quarter the mana, instant speed, and could be pointed at creatures. Even in such a weak deck, he always felt like he underperformed.

Recently, though, some rules clarifications have helped to highlight just how the Bombers's unusual ability can be tuned to your advantage. Under closer inspection, they can be quite handy after all - and no, not as a creature!

So because sacrificing the Bombers is part of an effect and NOT a cost, it will absolutely trigger multiple times if multiple creatures show up at the same time. Dragon Fodder will get you two creatures as well as six points of damage to your opponent's face for just two mana. Siege-Gang Commander ups the ante to a staggering twelve damage, and he's right on curve after you play the Bombers. Have even more mana to spend? Goblin Offensive amounts to a very unusual Fireball that grants quadratic damage for your mana. If your opponent has even a middling army, a Mogg Infestation will hit him for six damage for each creature he has - take that, elf decks! Of course, since you don't want your opponent to prematurely detonate your Bombers by dropping some chump on his turn, it's best to set them off the turn you play them - and for the sake of speed, that means finding some way to drop multiple creatures without costing mana. Krenko is the perfect setup, immediately turning your four mana into a Lava Spike for each goblin you control.

The other handy thing about Mogg Bombers is that, like all creatures, if they come into play at the same time as someone or someones else, they will recognize all those other creatures coming into play. Exempli gratia, you bring back Mogg Bombers and three other creatures into play with Twilight's Call, he sees three other creatures came into play and immediately bins himself to nail your opponent for nine damage. Patriarch's Bidding has been successfully pairing with goblin decks for years, and can quickly kill your opponent on the spot if you used Buried Alive to grab three Bombers.

How do you tie both of these handy tenets together? There's no better way than a kicked Rite of Replication - 5 triggers from the mogg you target, plus 4 each for all of the copies coming into play, means a total of 75 damage to your opponent's face. That should sort him out, yeah?

The Tower

The recent edition of Planechase reminds me of a much older supplemental format we simply knew as "The Tower." It is similar to Planechase, but much older and not mandated by Wizards of the Coast... and by both tokens obviously superior!

Double Negatives

Think back to grade four math class. Remember when negative numbers were dropped in your lap, and all the wild implications of adding negative numbers resulting in a decrease, or how subtracting negative numbers and the magic of the double negative results in a net increase? Well, Magic is a numbers-based game, and sometimes the unexpected implications of combined signifiers can have very interesting results.

One thing that's important to keep in mind is that creatures can have negative power. If you hit a Bouncing Beebles with Shrink, they're going to have -3 power for the turn, not just zero. Normally this is of no consequence, since a creature with negative power will still assign zero damage, but for our purposes today it's key that the game still tracks negative values of power. The trick is to find some use for a creature's power rather than just assigning combat damage.

Here's an easy example to start us off: consider Auriok Bladewarden. He can tap to pump a creature up - the bigger he is, the bigger a boost he gives. But what happens if you hit him with Chant of the Skifsang? Now he's got -12 power. He can still add his power to another creature, but what happens if you add negative twelve to a number? Why, it goes down by twelve! He can tap to give any creature a staggering -12/-12! You've achieved a mini-Visara in blue and white that can start firing off as early as turn three. Why use the Chant as a weak form of removal when you can transform it into a fearsome death cannon? Rabble-Rouser can serve in a less lethal capacity in red, letting you fog your opponent's whole board every attack. The result is kind of a colorshifted Dawnstrider (that doesn't even require a discard)... how very un-red!

Of course, adding negative values is pretty crafty, but there's nothing quite like a double negative to result in an unexpected boost. Giving a creature -13 power is a pretty hefty drop, but why settle for the double digits? Our favourite accidental monkeys, Hyalopterous Lemure and Viscid Lemures, can lower their power at will as often as you want. So if you lower a Lemure to -500 power, you can then sacrifice it to Ichor Explosion in order to... give every creature +500/+500! That's a pretty wild board state. If the seven mana for the Explosion is a little too hefty, Call for Blood can be had more cheaply and will probably be a win if you throw the bonus at your Invisible Stalker.

While the usually-fatal practice of reducing a creature's toughness is costed around par with most other removal, reducing power is generally a lesser solution and thus costed much more cheaply. So why not take advantage of this fact? There's no greater thrill than bamboozling your opponent with a rules interaction that makes sense but would never occur to the average player. Just don't be too surprised when suddenly everyone wants to trade you for your copies of Disorient and Constricting Tendrils.

Mana Abilities, Take Two

As we recently covered, the strictness of mana abilities can lead to some pretty bizarre consequences in very specific circumstances. A few more examples are gathered here, largely due to Chromatic Sphere featuring a mana ability that also causes you to draw a card.

Korlash, Heir to Blackblade and his fellow cards with Grandeur have an ability that involves discarding a copy of a card with the same name. What you might not have known is that it's actually possible to discard Korlash to himself. With a Suppression Field in play, his ability requires both mana and a discard to activate. Activate the ability of Words of Wind, then announce Korlash's ability. The quirkiness happens when you try to use a Chromatic Sphere's mana ability to pay for Korlash's ability - because remember, players can't respond to mana abilities, and they can be activated while paying for costs. So while paying for Korlash's ability (which costs "2, discard a card named Korlash, Heir to Blackblade",) activate Chromatic Sphere, replace the resulting card draw by returning Korlash to your hand, and then discard the card you just returned to your hand to finish paying the cost. Whoa! What happened there?

If you want to kick it old school rules-wise, it's possible to temporarily dip to 0 life or less while using mana abilities to pay for something. For example, with Words of Worship active, you can activate Tarnished Citadel and Chromatic Sphere to pay for a spell (might I suggest Repay in Kind?) and temporarily drop below 0 life until the Words replaces the card draw and brings you back to the realm of the living. After all, a player doesn't lose if they're only dead in between the checks on state-based effects. It almost feels like the old Mirror Universe ploy!

Because of the unique nature of mana abilities, Chromatic Sphere leads to many odd situations. If you control one plus a way to feed it mana, a Thought Lash and a Laboratory Maniac, you can win the game without ever giving your opponent a chance to respond - no Stifle, no Angel's Grace, nothing! Unlike the other combos listed, this one is good enough to actually win games at a tournament level... though be advised that it will result in no end of entertaining judge calls.

Dies to Removal

She would forever be safe from stray lightning bolts, from the gouts of flame, from the death-magic that had stolen the lives of so many of her people. Her dreams were still haunted with visions of those molten bolts of death; that crackling, violet lance of energy that suddenly siezed her best friend and scout-mate, Lydia. Their eyes met for an instant, they wordlessly shared a goodbye that lasted an eternity, and then Lydia was gone. The elves were forever fighting against all odds, and she was trapped in the center of it all - as if in sanctuary, forced to watch helplessly as her people continually were killed all around her.

...but her bloodline kept her safe. Like her mother and her grandmother before her, some ancient, esoteric arcane ward protected her from magic. Her remaining friends claimed she was lucky. Her ambush commander once told her she was blessed... but she knew better. For she knew the truth; what she had was not a blessing, but a curse. She was safe from the death-spells, yes, but with this came a heavy price. A price that she had to pay every day - some sort of indecipherable magic forbiddance. It could not be overcome; she could only try to live with it. For as a result of her magical nature...

...she could not wear pants.

Mana Abilities

In order to play spells in Magic, you usually have to pay for them with mana, usually generated by using some kind of "mana ability." Island has a mana ability, Black Lotus has a mana ability, Skirge Familiar has a mana ability. In 1997, tourney hopeful David Mills was disqualified from the finals of Pro Tour: Los Angeles for announcing spells and then using the mana abilities to pay for them after, which isn't an uncommon practice. This led to history's only Magic riot, as a group of furious neckbeards stormed the stage during the awards ceremony and demanded justice for Mills. The judges relented and awarded Mills a second-place prize, and proceeded to change the rules so that it became legal to activate a mana ability while paying costs. Now the rules state that a player can't do anything in response to a mana ability, so nothing can disrupt said mana ability once it's started.

This brings us to Caged Sun, a card that doesn't really work. As hinted at with the prior examples, all mana abilities are activated (i.e. pay cost: do effect) with the sole exception of Caged Sun, which is triggered (i.e. when trigger, then effect.) The rulings on Caged Sun state that it does have a mana ability nonetheless, as otherwise this would create some awkwardness when playing spells with the Sun in play. In summary, Caged Sun has a mana ability that adds mana to your mana pool whenever a land adds mana to your mana pool. Okay, not too complex. The rules start to break down when Caged Sun itself becomes a land, however. This can be accomplished by combining a few cards...

March of the Machines makes all artifacts into creatures, so Caged Sun is now an artifact creature. (You starting to notice how often this card comes up in these articles?)
Artificial Evolution or Xenograft make your creatures into a chosen creature type, so Caged Sun can become an "Artifact Creature - Saproling."
Life and Limb makes all saprolings into lands, so Caged Sun is at last an "Artifact Creature Land - Saproling Forest."

So at this point, Caged Sun has a mana ability that effectively reads "Whenever Caged Sun adds mana to your mana pool, add one mana of that colour to your mana pool." Neither player is allowed to do anything until this loop completes, so the players sit there helplessly as the game repeats itself ad nauseum. At this point, the game is nothing less than a draw.

Caged Sun is a fun example of the problems potentially caused by type-changing effects, and also the looming threat of infinite loops. An infamous type-change conflict exists by combining Humility and Opalescence, which causes Humility to lose the ability that causes it to lose all abilities. But wait... then that would mean... yeah, things get kind of confused.