Modern Love: Part 2

Good news, everyone: The team worked hard to get in a fix for Pauper and got there! The new commons will in fact be legal today! #MTGO

— Magic Online (@MagicOnline) March 22, 2017

Well that was unexpected. 

There's a good chance you read my blog post from yesterday where I shared my opinion about the issues I felt where facing the folks who make Magic. I believe those issues still exist. However I wanted to take some time and thank Wizards of the Coast.

It would have been really easy for the team to sit back and go with yesterday's announcement. They could have bided their time and made sure everything was rock solid before the new April 19th date.

Instead this happened:

@nerdtothecore @MagicOnline Credit for sure goes to our awesome Card Set team, I'm glad they were able to make it happen. :) #WotCStaff

— Lee Sharpe (@mtg_lee) March 22, 2017

The team found a fix and we get what we were initially promised. 

Now I won't sit here and say that this is ideal. In a perfect world this post and the other one would not have been needed as there would not have been a problem. But the world isn't perfect and, pardon my language, shit happens.

Credit where credit is due so thank you to the people on the Card Set Team. You made my day.

Thank you to Lee for being open and honest about this.

And thank you all for playing, and more importantly, caring about Pauper.

Now, let's join a league and get our teeth kicked in by Burning-Tree Emissary!

Modern Love

Due to an issue, #MTGMM3 commons will not be Pauper legal on #MTGO tomorrow. They will instead be legal effective April 19. #MTGO

— Magic Online (@MagicOnline) March 21, 2017

I'm not going to try and paint a rosy picture about this development. Yesterday the Magic community was  told that tomorrow the commons from Modern Masters 2017 would be legal to play in Pauper. Today we found out that was no longer the case and they would be delayed a month.

The announcement has left me frustrated.

I am not going to try and put a shine on this - it sucks. Wizards had a deadline and they missed it. They came out and told us but that does not change the fact that they are not delivering on expectations. 

I'm not happy about the situation. I reached out to Lee Sharpe for a statement and he sent me this (which I am sharing with his permission):

Unfortunately, an issue has resulted in the cards that are newly common in Modern Masters 2017 not legal in Pauper. This also applies to the commons that will be added to Magic Online Treasure Chests starting March 22.
This issue will be addressed with the April 19 build.  Until that date, these new commons will not be legal in the Pauper format.  Players will be able to play them in Pauper beginning April 19.
This wasn’t the experience we wanted to create for Pauper players with this release, and our apologies to those of you who were excited to begin brewing with the new cards right away.

I did not expect to get a reason - I've dealt with Wizards enough to know better. 

So what does this mean for Pauper?

First I cannot in good conscience call for a boycott. For me, Magic and Pauper provides a much needed release and escape. In my case it's from a chronic illness and taking away the opportunity for me to find respite in an attempt to prove a point would be doing myself more harm than good. And if this is true for me it is possible it is the case for other Pauper players as well.

At the same time I cannot tell people that they should continue to hand over money to play in Pauper leagues. If you choose to stop playing please be sure to make sure your reason for doing so is known. 

Pauper, in all likelihood, will chug along as normal. Which is a shame.

Modern Masters 2017 presented the opportunity to reshape the format. Burning-Tree Emissary looks to be a card that can transform the metagame. Delver, the Blue aggro-tempo deck, has been at the apex of Pauper for years (excluding when Peregrine Drake was legal). Burning-Tree Emissary was poised to make a run up the standings. And that says nothing about the other extremely powerful cards coming to common like Augur of Bolas, Falkenrath Noble, and Thunderous Wrath.

Modern Masters 2017 was supposed to change everything. It may still do that, but we'll just have to wait a month.

What upsets me most about this is that it seems to be happening more often across all of Magic. From issues with the power level of Standard to the inability of Magic Online to host special events to the size and prize payouts at Grand Prix the quality assurance of the product has taken a dip. 

To be clear it's still great, but it definitely is not where it has been or should be.

I have one major thought on this phenomena: Magic has outgrown its current structure. 

The move from two year rotation to 18 month rotation (and back to two years) would have logically put pressure on Design and Development. Crafting the game for one system, then the other, then back, can create the kind of undue stress on the process that may have fostered the current state of Standard. The number of people playing Magic, both digital and analog, as well as the rate of new things, could make it harder to keep the program up to date. Grand Prix are massive events that ten times the size of their original incarnation.

In my opinion Magic needs more people working on the product. Lessen the burden of those making the cards and let them adjust to the new structure and hopefully mistakes decline. Give Magic Online more staff so that deadlines are hit as expected. Figure out how to make Grand Prix serve as a pro event and a mini-festival. 

We love Magic. The people who make Magic love Magic. We put our money into the game and I think it's fair to ask Wizards to put a little more of theirs into the pot to make sure this perceived quality dip is just a blip. 

Some Enchanted Board State

Let me tell you why I love Enchantments in Commander: they’re underappreciated. Because of this they tend to be undervalued and under targeted and as a consequence it gives me an edge.

How did I get here? For as long as I can remember I have had a preoccupation with using the Graveyard as a resource. My flagship Golgari deck, no matter who is at the helm (currently Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest) has a strong graveyard theme, usually based around sacrificing for profit. I love Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble and any chance I have to turn them into machine guns is a chance I’ll take. This usually involves a healthy dose of Bloodghast and Reassembling Skeleton to make sure the hordes keep flowing. So when I sit down to play with one of my regular playgroups early copies of Bojuka Bog and Agent of Erebos will often get pointed at me.

Rightfully so.

In these I situations I would often find myself unable to claw back into the game. As regular Rob says, “No on runs enough graveyard removal.” Because of this our playgroup runs an overabundance of hate which makes my straight-graveyard decks start behind the 8 ball. When Conspiracy was printed and I was gifted Deathreap Ritual. Now I could draw cards while not taking time off from my regular game plan.

My exploration of Deathreap Ritual led me to have a greater appreciation of Enchantments. Sure, I had been running Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos for as long as I could remember but they would draw heat. Deathreap Ritual would just sit there and draw me cards. As I built more and more Commander decks I made an effort to use these permanents where I could. I found that Enchantments would often go unmolested and allow me to accrue incremental advantages. I’ve followed in Rob’s footsteps and often say now that people don’t run enough Enchantment removal.

Now this is somewhat misleading. Cards like Reclamation Sage and Acidic Slime see heavy play while Austere Command and Merciless Eviction are common sights. Enchantress decks - entire strategies built around Enchantments - exist and are powerhouses. So how can Enchantments be underappreciated if there is an entire strategy based around them? How can they fly under the radar if their answers are everywhere?

The goal with leveraging Enchantments is not to have them be the threats but rather have them enhance your game plan. In an Enchantress deck these permanents are usually everything - threats, answers, card advantage, combo pieces - and as such they can place a firm target on their ephemeral bodies making powerful cards like Replenish, Starfield of Nyx,and Bruna, Light of Alabaster a must. The way I use Enchantments is different and as such I often do not mind if one gets removed.

Now a deck like Mazirek, which makes heavy use of Grave Pact effects, does not enjoy when someone tampers with its engines. But that isn’t a deck I am going to talk about today. Instead I want to highlight two decks I feel that use the forgotten card type as force multipliers.

Creatures

Avatar of Slaughter

Bogardan Hellkite

Conquering Manticore

Crater Hellion

Crimson Hellkite

Hellkite Charger

Hellkite Tyrant

Hoard-Smelter Dragon

Hoarding Dragon

Humble Defector

Ire Shaman

Mindclaw Shaman

Molten Primordial
Scourge of the Throne

Skyline Despot

Utvara Hellkite

Warmonger Hellkite

Zealous Conscripts

Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs

Burnished Hart

Pilgrim’s Eye

Solemn Simulacrum

Steel Hellkite

Planeswalkers

Chandra, Pyromaster

Koth of the Hammer

Instants

Comet Storm

Into the Core

Reiterate

Sorceries

Blasphemous Act

Earthquake

Jaws of Stone

Slice and Dice

Volcanic Vision

Enchantments

Barrage of Expendables

Bedlam

Dictate of the Twin Gods

Dragon Tempest

Flameshadow Conjuring

Goblin Bombardment

Outpost Siege

Pyrohemia

Shivan Harvest

Vicious Shadows

Warstorm Surge

Artifacts

Altar of Dementia

Angel’s Trumpet

Armillary Sphere

Carnage Altar

Conjurer’s Closet

Fire Diamond

Hedron Archive

Magewight’s Stone

Magnifying Glass

Mimic Vat

Nevinyrral’s Disk

Sol Ring

Sundial of the Infinite

Thousand-Year Elixir

Wayfarer’s Bauble

Illusionist’s Bracers

Lightning Greaves

Skullclamp

Swiftfoot Boots

Lands

20 Mountain

Blasted Landscape

Dormant Volcano

Evolving Wilds

Flamekin Village

Forgotten Cave

Ghitu Encampment

High Market

Keldon Necropolis

Myriad Landscape

Mystifying Maze

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Opal Palace

Shivan Gorge

Smoldering Crater

Temple of the False God

Terramorphic Expanse

Zirilan is my Mono-Red Commander deck. It wants to cheat giant dragons into play with Zirilan of the Claw and make sure they stick around past the exile trigger with things like Conjurer’s Closet and Sundial of the Infinite. If that does not work, I want to keep the Dragons around in my graveyard (for when I finally up and get another copy of Feldon of the Third Path for this deck). Zirilan wins via damage, the kind dealt by a scaly sky force. As a Red deck it can sometimes have trouble keeping up with the card advantage other decks bring to the table so it needs to get creative. Eleven Enchantments aide Zirilan without being core to actually winning the game.

Barrage of Expendables, Goblin Bombardment, and Shivan Harvest all help keep my Dragons out of exile. The single point of damage or destruction of a Non-Basic Land, while nice, are hardly integral to the plan. These cards are also replicated in High Market, Keldon Necropolis, and Altar of Dementia. Those cards, however, are far more vulnerable than the trio of Enchantments so they stick around.

Bedlam and Dictate of the Twin Gods play into Zirilan’s subtheme of setting the rules of combat. If I am going to be winning via damage then I need to do a whole bunch of attacking. These cards are dangerous and tend to be deployed to help accelerate games to an end state.

Dragon Tempest, Vicious Shadows, and Warstorm Surge don’t set combat but they play along the same axis of damage. To that end so does Pyrohemia which has the added advantage of containing token armies.

Flameshadow Conjuring and Outpost Siege are both attempts at card advantage. Conjuring can put out additional token copies of a summoned Dragon which can be saved with Sundial of the Infinite. Outpost Siege can use its Khans mode to keep the cards flowing. Again, neither of these are integral to the victory - there are Dragons to worry about - but they help to support the deck.

I built Zirilan without Enchantments in mind. I knew I wanted some permanent way to keep up with decks that had more traditional forms of card advantage and these cards made sense. A few weeks ago I rebuilt my Red-Green deck from the ground up and decided to lean a bit harder on Enchantments. Before the rebuild the deck revolved around Killer Instinct and Impromptu Raid. In order to keep these key components around I included Dowsing Shaman. Moving from “living off the top” to a Tokens build, I decided to see exactly how much mileage I could get out of the Shaman.

Creatures

Acidic Slime

Avenger of Zendikar

Bloodspore Thrinax

Centaur Rootcaster

Dragon Broodmother

Dowsing Shaman

Emrakul’s Evangel

Eternal Witness

Fertilid

Furystoke Giant

Genesis Hydra

Goblin Dark-Dwellers

Hellkite Charger

Hornet Queen

Kessig Cagebreakers

Ogre Battledriver

Oracle of Mul Daya

Orochi Eggwatcher

Paleoloth

Rage Thrower

Savageborn Hydra

Skarrg Guildmage

Sporeback Troll

Terastodon

Thunderfoot Baloth

Ulvenwald Hydra

Wood Elves

Woodland Bellower

Courser of Kruphix

Eidolon of Blossoms

Pentavus

Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter

Dragonlord Atarka

Mina and Denn, Wildborn

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Xenagos, God of Revels

Planeswalkers

Domri Rade

Xenagos, the Reveler

Sorceries

Cultivate

Growth Spasm

Journey of Discovery

Kodama’s Reach

Nissa’s Expedition

Reviving Melody

Shamanic Revelation

Volcanic Wind

Enchantments

Beastmaster Ascension

Doubling Season

Druids’ Repository

Fires of Yavimaya

Goblin Bombardment

Hardened Scales

Outpost Siege

Saproling Burst

Seal of Primordium

Vicious Shadows

Bear Umbra

Squirrel Nest

Artifacts

Fireshrieker

Lightning Greaves

Mage Slayer

Swiftfoot Boots

Lands

8 Forest

8 Mountain

Cinder Glade

Command Tower

Forgotten Cave

Fungal Reaches

Gruul Guildgate

Gruul Turf

Kazandu Refuge

Mountain Valley

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood

Raging Ravine

Rogue’s Passage

Rootbound Crag

Rugged Highlands

Shivan Oasis

Slippery Karst

Smoldering Crater

Stomping Ground

Temple of Abandon

Temple of the False God

Timber Gorge

Tranquil Thicket

Borborygmos is an intensely personal deck these days. One of the side effects of my treatment for Crohn’s are some very loud stomach growls aka borborygmi. Good news is the treatment is working. The bad news is it’s costing us some sleep.

Borborygmos is a go-wide deck that wants to leverage the Commander’s ability to add counters to make the token army that much more impressive. Beastmaster Ascension, Doubling Season, Hardened Scales help to act as true force multipliers while Goblin Bombardment is an outlet for once the board is jam packed. But a key to this deck is Eidolon of Blossoms.

This deck is not jam packed with Enchantments. Counting the creatures it only has 16 of the type which is enough to draw a card off of the Eidolon a few times a game. That is, unless, Dowsing Shaman is on the table. Now Seal of Primordium and Fires of Yavimaya are recurring sources of velocity. Reviving Melody can “draw” quite a few cards out of the graveyard (old habits die hard) and with Eidolon on the table it looks closer to a Divination than a Restock.

Enchantments play a more prominent role in Borborygmos than they do it Zirilan. That being said the same principle applies - you can only focus on so many threats at once. The fact is it won’t be the Hardened Scales that kills you so dealing with the Tokens from Avenger of Zendikar is the right call. Fires of Yavimaya is scary but is it going to deal the final points of damage or will that be the horde of Wolves from Kessig Cagebreakers?

Enchantments are great in Commander. They do a ton of heavy lifting without being the biggest threat on the field. Part of the reason they are attractive is because removal that can hit them often can hit other threats as well, which can lower their threat profile. Figuring out how to walk that fine line is one reason I love building Commander decks and pitting them against my friends’ creations.

Just don’t pack Tranquility, kay?