Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 6

Another day, another dollar. Er, this is true if "day" is the shorthand way you refer to powerful and unusual cards that take your deck design to a whole new level. Wait, you don't? Huh. Regardless, I'm sure you know the drill by now - I've pulled together ten unusual, underplayed cards that have something to offer even a relatively competitive deck but cost one dollar at most. Think of your favourite builds, peruse the list as follows and keep an eye out for anything that might improve or at least spice up your games!

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 5

Tired of playing the same old cards? It can be strategically beneficial to know your deck inside and out, but if you're just playing casual games with your friends, it can also get kind of boring. There's a real element of fun in your own deck surprising you now and then, and there's no better way to encourage the process than trying out a new card or two. Of course, you can't afford to swap out your power cards all the time - or can you? As part of the Dollar Menu Dynamite series, we have here a list of ten cards that can be picked up for a dollar or less yet can make a big impact on the board. Find one that piques your interest and try it on for size!

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 4

There's nothing like the thrill of discovering a forgotten card that offers considerable power for cheap. After languishing forgotten, you're free to polish it off like any other gem and bring it to the table. Enter the Dollar Menu Dynamite series, which showcases a number of cards you may not be familiar with, each costing one dollar or less on the open market. Who says you have to break the bank to bring some serious power to the gaming table?

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:

Dollar Menu Dynamite, Part 3

There's no need to choose between paying for lunch or a new power card for your favourite casual deck - expand your horizons somewhat and you can have both! A couple years ago I started a tentative feature called Dollar Menu Dynamite, which offered suggestions for underrated and underplayed cards that can be had for one dollar or less. Well, wouldn't you know it, those fine folks in Seattle just keep on printing cards... and as there are ever more options, that has the side effect of meaning that older cards have more to replace them. Likewise, as new strategies become popular, old cards that happen to synergize with (or fiercely oppose) such strategies are suddenly given a new lease on life. Here, then, I have another ten cards for the budget-minded gamer, all of them easy to acquire, a buck or less, and able to bring plenty of havoc to the gaming table.

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.