All Rise

White weenie is a classic decktype, and it's always getting new tools to work with. That said, it's always got its classic weaknesses, too. White's great at coming in fast with efficient weenies, cheap combat tricks and the best removal you can find. In a slower paced setting, however - such as any multiplayer game - suddenly that might not cut it. In my experience, white can have trouble closing out these sorts of games; I'm all for hashing it out with creatures and removal for a while, but games do have to end at some point and I'm not exactly itching for a three-hour standstill. I don't like resorting to an "I-win" combo, but I do like the option of something above and beyond turning dudes sideways and hoping for the best. The big finishers you can find, citing Akroma as a classic example, can knock some heads in... but mass removal is the classic weakness of aggressive decks, and your big finisher makes you no more resilient to one than any of your cheaper guys. Can't we rely on some metric a little deeper than just being a fat flyer?

Hungry For Mana

Careful of needy creatures.

Let's say you're making a lean, mean Boros deck. When selecting creatures along your curve, you pick Figure of Destiny, Frenzied Goblin, Sunhome Guildmage, Truefire Paladin, Boros Reckoner and Brion Stoutarm to top it off. Individually, all of these are strong creatures and well worth using. However, you have a very serious problem on your hands. Why's that? In order to be fully effective, each of them needs mana invested past their original casting cost. If you're paying into your creatures, it ties up mana that could be spent on new creatures along your curve. It's up to you whether turning Figure of Destiny into a 4/4 or playing Boros Reckoner is better, and maybe you like always having options, but ideally the creatures in your hand won't be fighting for mana with the ones in play.

Really, I wouldn't run more than four mana-dependent creatures in a creature-heavy deck. Even then, it's preferable to have their abilities open as a "mana sink" rather than necessary for the card to be at all worthwhile. It's easy to look at Student of Warfare and think "gosh, a 4/4 with double strike for just one mana! What a house!" But it's not just one mana, is it? Sure, paying in installments is better than all at once, but you have to pony up 8 mana eventually to get that kind of size. Playing her turn one, then leveling twice and attacking with a 3/3 first striker is very aggressive, but are you really better off in the long term (or as long a term as a white weenie deck will be viewing) than if you had played Isamaru turn one and Accorder Paladin turn two? Not if your opponent is holding a Lightning Bolt, I'll say that much.

Likewise, try for independent creatures.  Let's say you have an elf deck. Elves, like many tribes, feature guys who power up/are powered up by the presence of other creatures of the same type. While the synergy of stacking these creatures together can quickly add up, you should try to mostly have creatures who will still be effective on their own. Jagged-Scar Archers is a powerful 3-drop, but if the board has been wiped and you topdeck it late game... well, it suddenly won't seem so impressive. A lot of very nasty 4-drops - Drove of Elves, Elvish Promenade, Heedless One, Wirewood Channeler - won't perform unless your board is already pretty stuffy. They only are any good if you're already winning or at least doing well. I wouldn't say Elvish Champion is necessarily a win-more card, even if he needs buddies to be more than a green Scathe Zombies, but try to have some guys who can dig you out of trouble.

Thought Police

We've outlined a number of ways to screw around with the rules of Magic over the years, all viewable under this heading if you so desire. The thing is, most of these exist in the realm of the purely theoretical - the type of circumstances that would only ever line up if some little stinker deliberately set out to do so. Fun to think about, but not the type of thing that will ever come up in an actual game.

Today, however, we're going to look at a bit of a rules snafu that is of particular interest because it is a situation that can easily happen in a real Magic tournament: it involves two cards that are both played regularly!

So first, we have Brainstorm. It's played quite a lot based on how powerful and versatile it is, but the effect is fairly simple: draw three cards and then put two back. Then you have another card played in Legacy quite a bit, and that's Sylvan Library.

The Library is something you might need to consider for a minute, seeing as it has had a few changes in wording over the years. As is often the goal (I hope,) the most recent oracle text makes it pretty clear how the card operates. You draw two extra cards during your draw step, and then of all the cards you've drawn this turn (which should usually be three, seeing as you have your normal draw step plus the two extra from the Library) you have to put two back or pay 4 life apiece to keep the extras. Again, a strong card, but not too tricky to understand.

Now, the problem is that these two cards interact in an odd way that may not be immediately apparent. If you have a Sylvan Library in play and then cast a Brainstorm during your upkeep, you will have to call a judge over to resolve this part of the turn. Yeah, no kidding. This is because Brainstorm permits you to put ANY two cards from your hand back on top of your library - they need not be from among the three cards Brainstorm drew you. Because of this, it could potentially be strategically important for an opponent to not know whether a card you put back is one you just drew or already had in your hand.

But then, when Sylvan Library triggers, you draw two extra cards and have the option to put any card you drew this turn back on top of your library. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal since those cards will generally be the usual plus the two extra from the library. However, the cards you drew from Brainstorm are also cards you drew this turn. So now it suddenly can't be clear whether or not a card you're placing back on top is one you drew with Brainstorm earlier in the turn. Because of this, you have to call a judge over solely to watch your hand of cards and confirm you aren't cheating, which is fairly ridiculous.

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!