A Box of Innistrad

It was my friend Neil's birthday. His present/party to himself was having three of his friends come over for a private sealed deck tournament. It was a blast.

He bought a box of Innistrad and we each got six packs. He gave us the option to pay $15 to keep the packs or play for free as long as we gave what we opened back to him. That left 12 packs for prizes split 6-3-2-1 which he let us keep even if we played for free. We each got three matches in a round robin.

Sitting around the kitchen table eating donuts, drinking coffee, and opening fresh booster packs is an excellent way to start a Saturday.

My pool didn't have any super bombs that I had to play so I began eliminating my weakest colors. I ended up in white and blue. Here's my deck (reconstructed from memory by the way - which took me about half an hour).

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	3 Stitched Drake 1 Invisible Stalker 2 Silver-Inlaid Dagger 1 Avacynian Priest 1 Cackling Counterpart 1 Champion of the Parish 2 Civilized Scholar 1 Deranged Assistant 1 Doomed Traveler 1 Forbidden Alchemy	1 Murder of Crows 1 Rebuke 1 Selhoff Occultist 1 Spectral Rider 1 Think Twice 1 Voiceless Spirit 1 Manor Gargoyle 2 Bonds of Faith 2 Shimmering Grotto 6 Plains 9 Island

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White provides the removal in the form of two Bonds of Faith and a Rebuke. The main offense is three Stitched Drakes which are backed up by a variety ways to get creatures into the graveyard: two Civilized Scholars, Deranged Assistant, Forbidden Alchemy and Selhoff Occultist. I learned the power of the Silver-Inlaid Dagger in the pre-release last month so I ran both of mine. One Invisible Stalker hopes to equip the dagger and steal some games.

I ended up winning first place by the skin of my teeth. My last match was vs Kris. We were both 2-0 (all the matches were very close) and this one was for all the marbles. Game one was going ok until Olivia Voldaren shows up. She dismantled my team and smashed my face. I reflect as I shuffle up for the next game. I think my deck is a little better than his, but winning two in a row is going to be difficult. Hopefully we don't see Olivia again. All I can do is focus on the next game. Game two: Turn one Silver-Inlaid Dagger, turn two Invisible Stalker, turn three equip. He had one card in his deck which could stop that, Tribute to Hunger. I played another creature the next turn and it was over. Final game. I'm looking pretty good with a two or three fliers in play. Then guess who? Olivia the Terrible. She wipes my board and gets huge. I'm going to lose. Then I draw the only card in my deck that can save me: Rebuke. She swings, she dies. I draw some Stitched Drakes, make a few copies with Cackling Counterpart and seal the deal.

I traded all the good stuff in my prize packs for some classic loot: a 4th edition Wrath of God and a beautiful revised Sol Ring.

It's not if we're going to this again, but when. Next time maybe I'll host. I highly recommend splitting a box with a few friends for your own Kitchen Table Invitational.

The Turbo Xerox Rule

Notice anything odd about this deck?

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Delver Blue by newplan. 4-0 Daily Event 2925834
	4 Cloud of Faeries 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Ninja of the Deep Hours 4 Spellstutter Sprite 2 Brainstorm 4 Counterspell 2 Curse of Chains 4 Daze 2 Echoing Truth 4 Gitaxian Probe 2 Gush 2 Intervene 4 Preordain 4 Think Twice 14 Island

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Only 14 lands. Fourteen!? I've never seen a land count that low. A standard midrange deck should run 24 lands. Control decks need a few more and aggro decks can use less. But the minimum I've seen is 17, and that's for very aggressive Goblin and Infect decks. At first I thought the list had a typo. Then I thought maybe that deck was just super inconsistent. Then SpikeBoyM over at PDCMagic, in a roundabout way, taught me a little history lesson. He said, "I encourage you to read everything out there about Turbo-Xerox".

I dug up what I could about this mysterious "Turbo Xerox".

Our first reference is an email from 1997:

Subject: Re: A Chance With Common Cards?
From: Alan Comer
Date: 1997/06/27

Even without weatherlight, it is possible. The deck I took 2nd place in the So. Cal Regionals had no rares. It was more by coincidence than by design. Around here, it has been dubbed the Turbo Xerox deck, as everybody copied it due to the lack of rares.

4 x Force of Will
3 x Dissipate
4 x Counterspell
4 x Powersink
4 x Memory Lapse
4 x Foreshadow
4 x Portent
4 x Impulse
4 x Suq-ata Firewalker
4 x Waterspout Djinn
4 x Man-o-War
1 x Dream Tides
17 x Islands

The important thing to remember with this deck is that early on, you MUST use the library manipulation to get to your land. Later, you can use it to get to cool spells. Things like: I portent your library. I foreshadow away your good spell...

The library manipulation he's referring to are the cheap cantrips Portent, Impulse, and Foreshadow.

Mike Flores wrote about this deck in 2005:

The principle of the original Xerox deck is that for every four 1-2 mana cantrips, you can remove two lands. Therefore, even though Alan played only 17 actual Islands, the Foreshadows, Impulses, and Portents raised his effective count considerably. In the early game, Alan would have to use his cantrips to find land, but in the late game, he could use them to always have a counter in hand."

I'll call this the Turbo Xerox Rule.

The Turbo Xerox Rule
For every four 1-2 mana cantrips, you can remove two lands.

Looking back over newplan's deck we see:

One mana cantrips:
2 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Preordain

Two mana cantrips:
4 Cloud of Faeries
2 Gush
4 Think Twice

Ten one mana cantrips and ten two mana cantrips.
20 cheap cantrips / 4 = 5 sets of cheap cantrips.
5 sets * 2 lands = 10 lands saved.
24 lands -10 lands = 14 lands.

Like I said, I've never seen that before, but it makes sense. I guess most Storm builds operate on the same principle.

I wonder what Alan Comer would think about pushing the rule to that far of an extreme. To me the concept makes sense in general but I have to feel it starts to break down at some point. This is just conjecture, however. Another very important point is the Delver deck is fully operation on two lands. You can't put five drops in a 14 land deck no matter how many cheap cantrips you have.

Another thing to watch out for: You need to have plenty of one mana cantrips. If you only have two mana cantrips then you run the risk of never getting to two lands. This deck has the nice even split though.

This is definitely an expert level deck-building trick, but it's good to understand. I don't see myself building any 14 land decks in the immediate future, but I've often struggled with finding four slots for a set of Ponders. Armed with the knowledge of the Turbo Xerox Rule I can cut two lands making a full set of Ponders only cost two slots! Early you dig for land and late you dig for business spells. Very cool.

Patrick Chapin provides some interesting additional insight into Turbo Xerox in this article.

Aesthetics Matter

A Magic card can viewed as having two parts: functional and non-functional. The functional part of a card is what affects the gameplay: mana cost, card type, and rules text. The non-functional part is everything else: artwork, flavor text, name, or the aesthetics.

Players often evaluate cards based on functional properties only. A "good" card is a powerful card. This makes sense because most players play the game to win (myself included). However, sometimes I think it's interesting to evaluate cards from a game design perspective. From this viewpoint a "good" card generally means a "fun" card, since a game's purpose is to be fun. The functional properties of a card are extremely important for determining if a card is fun. It's not the artwork that makes people hate Stasis. However, I think aesthetics play an important, though more subtle, role in what makes a card "good" from a design perspective.

Compare Doom Blade to Go for the Throat. Functionally they are very similar. Aesthetically, at least as far as I'm concerned, they aren't even close. The artwork and flavor text on the two are somewhat comparable. The latest version of Doom Blade doesn't even have flavor text (doesn't need it), but what makes "Go for the Throat" fail is the name. You can imagine a Black Mage casting a "Doom Blade" to obliterate a Serra Angel. It's pure death in huge, magical blade form. Now I'm going to cast "Go for the Throat"? Or maybe I'm just going to "Go for the Throat"? Or maybe I'm going to send that evil looking elf lady to do it for me? Imaginary wizard dueling aside, players still have to talk about the cards. "I doom bladed the angel". "I was saving my doom blade". You know how players refer to Go for the Throat? GFTT.

Another black removal comparison: Grasp of Darkness vs Victim of Night. Can you guess which one I like more? For this comparison I think the artwork is hands down in favor of Grasp. Looking at Victim... What, did he get mugged in a back alley? Or is he kneeling on a red mat? While "Victim of Night" isn't as bad a name as "Go for the Throat", I'd much prefer casting Grasp of Darkness. What's most interesting about this comparison, however, is the aesthetics of the rules text. This matters too. "Target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn." Bam. Done. Elegant. Compare to (hold on let me look it up) "Destroy target non-Vampire, non-Werewolf, non-Zombie creature." Grasp of Darkness "consumes" four points of life from a creature. Victim of Night reads like an if-else block in a computer program. Calculating if I can make you a Victim of Night... are you a non-Vampire creature? Yes. Are you a non-Werewolf creature? Yes. Are you a non-Zombie creature? Yes. OK, then you're going to bleed on the wall.

Aesthetics matter, and it's good to talk about something that normally doesn't get a lot of attention. I act like I mathematically evaluate every card based on the functional properties, but you know what? I don't own any Go for the Throats and I never really thought about the ratio of artifact vs non-artifact creatures.

Chandra and Friends

4 Reckless Waif 3 Grim Lavamancer 4 Goblin Wardriver 4 Stormblood Berserker 4 Chandra's Phoenix 3 Moltensteel Dragon 2 Chandra, the Firebrand 2 Shock 2 Geistflame 3 Incinerate 3 Arc Trail 4 Brimstone Volley 22 Mountain

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EDIT 9/15 (list shows latest version):
-1 Moltensteel Dragon
-2 Kessig Wolf
-1 Grim Lavamancer
+4 Reckless Waif
I realized how important one drops are to enable the Berserker. Waif is really good.

My first deck of the new Standard season! I decided to build this deck when I realized I could pick up Chandra, the Firebrand for about six tickets and Chandra's Phoenix for one each. If you don't know, tickets are the de facto currency in MTGO and can be purchased for one dollar each.

A quick aside. I play Standard in the casual room online and like to build my own budget friendly, but "competitive" decks. Of course, budget decks rarely can compete with top tier tournament decks, so I don't mean competitive in that sense, but rather, competitive as possible given my budget restraints. It's almost like I play a "Budget Standard" format in which I build a deck that doesn't break the bank and try to win in the casual room. I enjoy doing this because it's cheaper, I see a much more diverse metagame as opposed only top tier decks, and I get to build my own decks since there are no decklists to copy for my imaginary format. Everybody has their own ideas of what the "casual" in "casual room" means and to me it's this.

Anyway, I put this deck together for about 25 tix. Half of that was for two copies of Chandra, and most of the rest was the Phoenixes and Lavamancers.

I think the heart of the deck consists of Stormblood Berserker and Chandra's Phoenix. Both are excellent aggressive creatures. The Wardrivers and Kessig Wolves provide some other decent attackers. The Lavamancer is interesting. As far as I'm concerned his first and most important role is to be a 1/1 one drop, and swing on turn two to enable bloodthirst on the berserker. Of course he also has the whole repeatable burn thing for which he is famous.

I actually picked up the dragon for a previous deck, which was a failed experiment, but I decided to throw him in at the top of the curve to see what happened. I was really impressed. For starters, I almost never pay six mana for him. He can come in as early as turn four. This means on turn five, assuming he survives until then, he swings for four plus however much mana you want to pay plus however much life you want to pay. His "phyrexian firebreathing" is extremely effective in a mono-red aggro deck since I have nothing but red mana to spend and don't care much about losing life. I've had games were absolutely nothing went right except I stuck this guy then attacked twice for about eight each and finished the game with a burn spell. He absolutely can win the game by himself and it doesn't take long to do so.

This brings us to Chandra herself. No, she doesn't bury your opponent under card advantage or crush him or her with endless beast tokens, but I really like her. Being able to pick off one toughness creatures, or provide an extra point of damage to a blocker, or just ping the opponent is nice, but copied burn spells is where it's at: Arc Trail can take down a Titan or take or take out four creatures. Even a Shock can deal with a major threat and a doubled Brimstone Volley targeting your opponent can win out of nowhere. She also has the threat to go ultimate. Like most plansewalkers she just provides you with a lot of good options. Also, the her synergy with her Phoenix and the Berserker is hard to ignore.

The suite of burns spells is pretty straightforward. At first I had Fireball instead of Arc Trail, with dreams of x=8 doubled fireballs, but I think Arc Trail is right. I never really like to see Fireball early and since this deck tries to end the game early I generally wasn't happy with it. I always seem to find an good use for Arc Trail however. I really like the newcomer Geistflame. It's my burn spell of choice to trigger a Phoenix or Berserker.

I think Chandra's Phoenix is the best card in the deck. A 2/2 hasty flier for three is good. The "rebirth" puts it over the top. Stormblood Berserker is a crusher too, however. Never cast it without bloodthirst.

I started tracking each of my deck's wins and losses. Remember this is the casual room with my arbitrary budget restriction so it doesn't mean a whole lot. It's mainly to give me an idea of my decks' releative strengths. That being said, this one is currently at 17-7.

If I wanted to put a little more money into this one I'd look at including Shrine of Burning Rage and maybe Slagstorm.

Try it out! Let me know how it goes, and remember The Philosophy of Fire.

Vampire Nighthawk

Standard has rotated, Innistrad pushes out Zendikar, and I'll miss no card more than this one. From a design perspective it's really a beautiful card. Put three pre-existing abilities on an appropriately sized creature and somehow it creates a perfect representation of a "Vampire Shaman". Set the cost at a very efficient three mana and now you have "Awesome Vampire Shaman" - all using established mechanics. The excellent art completes the package.

I remember when this was previewed people were flipping out. "ZOMG! POWER CREEP!!!". I remember hearing the term mini-Baneslayer. I'm OK with a little power creep if it means I get this guy. It's not like he dominated the tournament scene like, say, Bloodbraid Elf. Vampire Nighthawk embodies efficiency. You can compare him to most any three drop in the format and see this. My personal favorite comparison is to Mindless Null.

I played the Nighthawk in blue/black and mono-black decks. Both were midrange and both heavily relied on the Nighthawk. In fact, after playing with it enough I began to realize the huge importance of a good three drop in a midrange deck. It needs to do two things: slow down aggro decks and put pressure on control decks. The Nighthawk did both exceptionally well. There is nothing worse than trying to attack into a nighthawk with a bunch of goblins, and vs slower decks a four point life swing each turn demands attention. Equip the him with the excellent Trusty Machete and things got scary. His presence on the board was so important I started running Spell Pierce to protect him.

I think I just like blue/black midrange decks because even without my all-star I'm going for it again this season. His replacement? Phyrexian Crusader. Yeah, he's good, but... fingers crossed for M13 Return of the Nighthawk!