Card in Review - Haakon, Stromgald Scourge

While throwing creatures at your opponent's face is a good time, nothing's more frustrating than having them killed off. Between blockers, kill spells and you occasionally being forced to chump-block, it's not often a critter can stick to the board for long. So rather than try to fight the inevitable, why not embrace it? If they die, so be it - bring them back as many times as you need!

Sounds a little lofty, doesn't it? We can't all be Nether Spirit. Well, so long as you don't mind cavalry charges, you can play all of your creatures from your graveyard just as easily as from your hand - while your crucial card is in play, that is. If you're picturing some mana-hungry behemoth like Debtors' Knell or Sheoldred, worry not. All you need is 3 paltry mana and a little creative deckbuilding, and the Dead Men of Dunharrow will be yours to command!

MVG (Most Vertical Goblin)

The recent printing of Goblin Freerunner made me realize something: ever notice that goblins have the extreme sports aspect of Magic on lockdown? Skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding, even parasailing... the rest of Dominaria's gotta step it up!

When is a goblin not a goblin?
When you tie it to a rock sled and push it
down a mountain, apparently.

Thus, we have collected the most foolhardy and adventurous little green guys from Skirk Ridge to Kuldotha, Akki and Mogg alike. The First Goblin Olympics covers all sorts of dangerous events, and even has a Torchrunner on loan from the Frogtosser Games. Let the mayhem commence!

Creatures
4 Fire Juggler
4 Goblin Bowling Team
4 Goblin Freerunner
4 Goblin Glider
4 Goblin Rimerunner
4 Goblin Rock Sled
4 Goblin Ski Patrol
4 Goblin Sledder
2 Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 Oxidda Daredevil

Lands
1 Arena
21 Snow-Covered Mountain

Predator 2: The Death of a Premise

So, now this is happening.

Anyone getting tanked up to make a moral judgment about this criticism should consider that the auteurs of this harlequin fetus have a job in paradise creating entertainment products to sell at a markup. Their asses are covered, their motivations a mixture of personal creative ambition and company direction, and like any object d’art put forth for our consumption, and to consume our hard-earned dollars, it is the fairest of games. Fairer, indeed, than Magic itself.

It was with the weariness of a weathered pack animal that I slumped upon seeing the M14 Sliver reboot. It is not just that it’s unnecessary, ill-advised, implicitly insulting. It’s that creativity has found no purchase on the dull edifice of this undertaking. It precedes M14 like a corpse floating headlong down the Nile, fly-blown and crocodile-bitten, leaving us to wonder what homogenized horrors may yet come.

Slivers with male and female characteristics? (Can sexualization be far behind? Is the Sarah Kerrigan of Slivers on the horizon? Or is one Glissa enough?)

Sliver generals, ranks within the collective? Slivers in clothing?

A menacing Sliver planeswalker dropping one-liners on token-generation Sorceries?

“You’re about to get a bad case of... the hives.”

The mind reels and rebels.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the admission that this doesn’t matter. A set is no museum exhibit but a collection of mass-produced game pieces, and if the rooks and pawns carry the benzine stink of the industrial process, they will still play readily enough. The art itself is expertly done. In a year, nobody will care. We are just here to get on the record, you and I, that we may one day link back to this combined outcry of voices, having suffered for too lengthy an interval the release of sneering, talking slivers that look like Donkey Kong. Today is our Independence Day.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, look at this piece of shit:

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?

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?

Changelings up in this

Mistform Ultimus is all of the following:

A Giant Dwarf

A Pirate Ninja

A Turtle Rabbit

An Angel Devil

An Insect Anteater

A Deserter Coward

An Elephant Rat

A Crocodile Eye

A Horror Reflection

A Weird Licid

A Berserker Slug

A Serf Citizen

A Dryad Pincher

An Egg Orb

A Carrier Survivor

A Troll Goat

A Treefolk Splinter

A Human Bat

An Elk Caribou

A Satyr Centaur

A Whale Assassin

A Demon Squirrel

An Efreet Djinn

An Elf Orc

A Kirin Lammasu

A Manticore Masticore

A Tetravite Pentavite Triskelavite

An Ox Aurochs

A Hippo Griffin Hippogriff

A Gremlin Imp

A Pegasus Unicorn

A Hag Fish

A Spirit Dragon

An Egg Bringer

A Wall Spawn

A Rhino Oyster

A Juggernaut Advisor

A Basilisk Cockatrice Gorgon

A Mutant Wolverine Beast Rogue Cyclops Phoenix Angel

A Wizard Cleric Rogue Warrior Monk Barbarian Druid

A Prism Reflection Illusion

A Cat Bat Rat Wombat Bureaucrat

A Lurker Berserker Assembly Worker

A Minor Mutant Ninja Turtle

A Bat Bear Boar Beast Bird

Ahoy Matey!

Another installment in the archive of sad little theme decks - today's theme? Pirates.

Pirates go about blasting away at folks and stealing things wherever there's water. For one, that means they should be safe from land destruction decks. What's left after you destroy all the land in the world? Waterworld? Well, I couldn't really come up with a "Bad Kevin Costner movies" theme deck, despite there being plenty of fodder, so instead I thought up a pirate deck. That delightful Mercadian Masques has a lot of theme deck potential and it wouldn't be hard to put together a Masques-block deck, but I couldn't resist the likes of Pirate Ship and Ramirez.

The Pirates
1 Armored Galleon
1 Cloud Pirates
1 Kukemssa Pirates
1 Pirate Ship
1 Ramirez DePietro
1 Reef Pirates
1 Rishadan Airship
1 Rishadan Brigand
1 Rishadan Cutpurse
1 Rishadan Footpad
1 Steam Frigate

Strange Monsters
1 Drowned
1 Sea Monster
1 Skeleton Ship
1 Tidal Kraken

Shore Trouble
1 Betrayal
1 Bribery
1 Hoodwink
1 Misdirection
1 Port Inspector
1 Rishadan Pawnshop
1 Waterfront Bouncer

Sailing the Seas
1 Barbed Sextant
1 Coastal Piracy
1 Crooked Scales
1 Deep Water
1 Doom Cannon
1 Embargo
1 Explorer's Scope
1 High Tide
1 Piracy
1 Piracy Charm
1 Siren's Call
1 Star Compass
1 Trade Routes
1 Treachery
1 Treasure Trove
1 War Barge
1 War Tax

Destinations
1 Coral Atoll
1 Dark Depths
2 Dreadship Reef
10 Island
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Remote Isle
1 Rishadan Port
1 Rootwater Depths
1 Saprazzan Cove
1 Seafarer's Quay
1 Watery Grave

Heavy Medal

Gold - it's not just for roleplaying games and fake teeth. These past two weeks, it has been for Olympic Medals.

Typically I ignore the Olympics, because a) Sports are boring; b) the certifiably evil Olympic Commitee made the Legend of the 5 Rings CCG change its card backs; and c) they removed Foosball and Long Distance Dice-Spitting from the event roster. Nonetheless, it was kind of neat that Canada recieved the most gold medals in the Winter Olympics this year of any country in history. That's not what we're here about, however. No, I am giving the Olympics another chance based on one simple reason: Dominaria has finally qualified to compete. All your favourite Magic characters will be going all-out in an attempt to gain pride for their whacked-out world.

"If I can just control the ball and score a lot, I'll take the big one," said Ertai, wizard adept, who along with his deceased buddy, Gerrard "the Nard" Capashen, will be doing the two-man luge. Also look for Hannah and Squee in the pairs figure skating competition. You haven't really seen ice skating until you've seen a goblin doing a triple-axle to the beat of ABBA's "Mama Mia."

Goblins definetley got game - and no, I don't mean crapmeister Goblin Game. Look for the Goblin Rock Sled in the bobsled event, Goblin Ski Patrol in the ski jumping events and the Goblin Snowman on "The Man Show."

Dominaria wants a medal so badly, they're entering more genetically engineered ringers than Russia, China, and East Germany combined. They have a Hired Giant in the giant slalom, Vesuvan Doppleganger in the biathlon, Cateran Enforcer cross-country skiing, Ski-zzik downhill skiing; and more Cloudskates than you can shake a Counterspell at.

It'll be fun to watch, but my guess is that Team Dominaria will be banned from future Olympics faster than Memory Jar. Let's face it, the summer games would be wrecked by the likes of the Centaur Chieftain in the 50-yard dash, Anurid Brushopper in the long jump and Karn in the shotput. No man alive has more experience palming metal balls than Karn. It would be downright unfair.

Nonetheless, I can't wait for the next Winter Olympics. Four years from now, when I'm the guy in the front row with a "Go Licids" sign and my face painted with the colours of the coalition, I will finally command the respect of cardfloppers and dicechuckers as well as jocks the world over.

A Scribe About Tribes

Tribes? Ho boy, Slivers are gonna pop up in here.

Basically, there are a crapload of tribes - especially with Wizards' recent fanatical need to convert more and more of the ubiquitous one-ofs (Gone is the possibility to make an Uncle Istvan deck. No longer may you craft a Niall-Silvain tribal deck. People-of-the-woods deck? Forget it.) Some tribes have a lot of cohesion; some have a little. For instance, most spiders can block flyers, and most imps can fly... or at least jump well. (To be printed, an imp at least has to be able to touch the rim, not just the net.) That is pretty much not the tribes in question today. I mean tribes with something more coherent in common - typically a block thing - that is just theirs. Furthermore, I'm talking about the ones that I remember as I write this post, not all of them.

Basically, mechanically-connected tribes lie somewhere along a three-sided continuum. A contrinuum. One point is made of ones that, because of the nature of their mechanical connection, work really well together. Example: Slivers. The other point is made of ones that don't have tons of natural synergy, but at least got a few lord cards. Example: samurai. The last point is made of ones that don't work well together, or even actively work against each other. Example: licids. Naturally I made a licids deck anyhow.

Okay, so first up in order of recall is Chimeras. There were like, four of these guys, but when I actually played with whatever set these losers were in I didn't know about one of them, so I thought there were three. Anyway, these guys - Lead-Belly Chimera, Tin-Wing Chimera, Iron-Heart Chimera, and Some Other Chimera are all 2/2 for 4 with some keyword ability, and you can sacrifice them to permanently give another chimera +2/+2 and the keyword ability. It doesn't transfer on, though, so if you sacrifice the 4/4 chimera with two keyword abilities, it only passes on the one it naturally has.
Anyways, I have a brain dysfunction that makes me need to craft synergistic decks, sometimes possessing me to run a deck loaded up with these colorless rejects. Among the most obvious problem with such a deck is that all 16 (of course you're playing 4 of each of them) of your creatures cost 4 mana, and all are only 2/2. On their own, each chimera is worse than an existing creature that costs two mana. For Chimeras done right, see Modular.

Now, the one we all saw coming - Slivers. It seems every time they print a new batch of Slivers, I like them a bit less. When I started playing, only one set of slivers had been released, and I was so crazy for them. Like every other player on the planet, I totally wanted to be the sliver guy. Everyone wanted Sliver Queen, but of course the real prize was Crystalline Sliver. I'll admit I didn't make my Sliver deck until the second batch came out, but they're still better than any Time Spiral nonsense. Now there's so many slivers that you can totally play a one-colour Sliver deck, which seems weird to me, since that means it will be hard to play that Sliver Queen which you are bound by law to include. It also bugs the heck outta me that the only Vigilance sliver is blue. What the heck, people.

I am basically the only guy with fond memories of licids. Licids are fellows that start out as creatures, but each has a tap ability that turns them into rules problems. When Ravnica hit, I joked that they should bring back licids for the Orzhov, because they're a rules nightmare, which combines a white thing - rules - with a black thing - nightmares. Licids are probably the only tribe where the creature depicted on the card is not the most prominent thing in the art. Also, despite being the size of my hand, half of the licids can kill a bear... so you know they're badasses.
What they're not badass at is working together, as my former licid deck totally proved. A very unexciting thing to enchant with say, Quickening Licid is another licid, because making a french vanilla creature out of two of your creatures is not the most exciting thing to do. Also, if you use the enchanted licid's ability, the one riding on it just dies. My favorite use for licids has very little to do with actually enchanting anything. See, when a licid becomes an enchantment, it stops being a creature. So you can block with a licid, then, with damage on the stack, tap him to turn him into a creature enchantment. Then the guy you were targeting gets bolted and your licid dies anyway, because the ability is worded in a way that it isn't countered if the target dies. Yeah, licids rule.

Spikes, like Spike Soldier were okay, I suppose. While there are 21 cards with "spike" in the name, there were only ten of these guys until they printed another one in Time Spiral. Spikes work together sorta well, in the sense that some of them have other uses for the +1/+1 counters that can be moved between them, and if you move a counter to a spike, you can move it off later. A spike deck (of course I have a spike deck) has basically the same problem as a licid deck - there's no discernible way to win. None of your spikes have evasion. I guess you could use your spikes to pile counters onto another, better creature, but there are a plethora of better ways to pump up a creature than to pay 2 mana to move counters one at a time to it.
There's also Spike Cannibal, which is either some sort of +1/+1 counter hoser or something you put in a apike deck despite the fact that it's a different color so that you can lose all of your more-or-less efficiently costed guys and get one big guy. With no evasion or anything. Who is instantly destroyed by a crappy removal card.
I believe if the spikes were printed today, most of them would be just a little stronger or a little more interesting; they had the misfortune to be born during a period when green really sucked and nobody cared. (That is, most of the history of the game.) For spikes done right, see Graft.

Atogs are all about "Sacrifice whatever: this guy gets +2/+2 until end of turn." You can't build an atog deck for three reasons. Firstly, none of the atogs want to be in a deck with other atogs. They want to be in a deck with whatever the heck random thing or concept they feed on. Secondly, you have the choice between either not playing the strongest atog or being a jerk by playing one of the best creatures in the history of ever in casual. Finally, if you're playing an atog deck, you sort of feel like you should be playing their lord, which is one of the worst creatures ever. Don't play Atogatog. Don't you do it.

Rebels search up. Mercenaries search down. In a rebel deck, you can use your weak creature to find a bigger one. In a mercenary deck, you can tap your big guy to find... something smaller. You mostly have to hardcast everything. In a rebel deck, you need hardcast only your first guy. This is why rebel decks are badass and mercenary decks suck. It's a pity, because the mercenaries themselves are much cooler. The mercenaries also had better toolbox cards in general. Nonetheless, Lin-Sivvi is one of the very few creatures to ever have been banned in any format. I don't know that mercenaries were even constructed playable. Two other notes: one of the strongest white tribes of all time is called "rebels"; I don't think of rebellion as a particularly white thing. Secondly, the card Mercenaries itself is white, and set a precedent for mercenaries by sucking.

Zuberas were a cheap tribe to build around, because none are rare and all of the normal ones are common. Furthermore, I swear that something was up with the print run, because every pack of Champions I've ever opened with had like, nine of them in there. Basically, the goal of the Zubera deck was to get all of your creatures killed at once. But first you wanted to get as many of the suckers out there at once as possible. The right way to do this was to play a lot of card drawing and stuff and to not be afraid to take some hits while you waited to Wrath everything away. The wrong way is Followed Footsteps, but I don't care.

You know what? I'm not going to write about Samurai.

Ninjas were cool, because you got to feel all sneaky, even though it was really always like "well, Betrayers came out two months ago, and he's got four blue and black lands untapped, and he's attacking with an Ornithoptor or Sage Owl, two cards that people never play with for no reason. I wonder what's going to happen?" Higure, the Still Wind was an extremely cool first for a lord: rather than just giving his tribe +1/+1, he had two abilities that synergize extremely well with two things that all ninjas have in common: they want to be in your hand, and they want to not be blocked when they attack. Many later lords do this as well, and it's really cool.