Let’s get ready to Rrrrrrrrrrumble!

Brawl is coming to Arena! 

No, not him!

So what is Brawl, and why should you care? If you’re not familiar with Brawl, or it’s older brother Commander (aka Elder Dragon Highlander), here’s a quick primer. 

Brawl is a 60 card Constructed format. Each of these decks will have a “Commander” - that is a Legendary Creature, or in this case also a Planeswalker, who sits in the Command Zone. What is the Command Zone? Well, I probably should do a whole article on Zones, but the Command Zone is where your Planeswalker Emblems sit. Aside from that, and Commanders, it’s not used for much. 

You can cast your Commander from your Command Zone anytime you could cast a Creature or Planeswalker. (Note, if you have something that modifies the timing, likeVivien, Champion of the Wilds, then you can cast your Commander at instant speed, if it’s applicable to that card type.) Whenever your Commander would change Zones - this means things like going from the Battlefield to your hand, or to the Graveyard, or being Exiled, or from your Hand to your Graveyard - you may choose to put it back into the Command Zone. 

Each time you cast your Commander out of the Command Zone after the first, there’s a “Commander Tax” - which means that you’ll have to pay an additional 2 generic mana to cast it. For example Emmara, Soul of the Accord costs 2 the first time you cast her (GW), then 4 (2GW), then 6 (4GW), etc… This only applies to casting it from the Command Zone. If it gets bounced to your hand, and then you cast it from your hand, there’s no Commander Tax. Likewise, if you could cast it from your Graveyard - and the only example I can find of this in Standard is Squee, the Immortal - there’s no Commander tax there either. 

There’s two basic deck-building restrictions in Brawl. First, it’s a Singleton format. This means that each deck can only contain one named copy of any card, except for basic lands (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest). 

With me so far? Here’s the fun part. Second, every card in the deck must match the “color identity” of your Commander. Also, you can’t run lands that produce colored Mana which does not match your Commander’s color identity. Color identity is determined by the color of mana symbols in the Commander’s casting cost, PLUS any colored mana symbols in its rules text (excluding “reminder text”) 

Blind Obedience only has a White color identity because the hybrid Mana symbol is in the text that explains how Extort works. 

Here’s some examples: 

Chandra has a Mono-Red color identity. Each card in a deck with Chandra must be either mono-Red or have a Colorless color identity (For example Rakdos Locket has a B/R color identity, so you couldn’t play it with Chandra). 

With Chandra as your Commander, the only Basic land you can run is Mountain. You could not run a Shock Land, like Stomping Ground, even though it has the “Mountain” type. You can run lands that have no color identity, like Arch of Orazca, or Blast Zone. You can run lands that produce multiple colors, as long as they don’t specifically contain a mana symbol not aligned with your Commander’s color identity, for example Interplanar Beacon, or Lotus Field, or Unclaimed Territory. You can also run colored aligned non-basic lands, like Memorial to War. All this applies to any other mono-colored Commander. Fblthp, the Lost can only run Islands, Baird, Steward of Argive can only run Plains, Isareth the Awakener can only run Swamps, and Marwyn, the Nurturer can only run Forests. 

Sorin and Kaya both have a Black/White color identity. Hybrid mana symbols count as both colors for the purpose of Brawl. 

Nicky B has a Grixis color identity (Grixis is the name for the U/R/B “Shard” color pairing) You do not have to actually run all three colors in your deck. You could use him as a commander for a B/U or U/R, or R/B deck. 

Ugin has a Colorless color identity. It would be very hard to build a Brawl deck around him, because you cannot run any Basic Lands. Frankly, I think it might be impossible, but I’d love to see your list, if you manage it. 

Golos is a 5 color commander. Because his activated ability is WUBRG, that counts toward his color identity. There’s absolutely no restrictions to what you can put in a Golos deck, aside from the Singleton restriction. 

Well, that’s the basics of the Brawl format. So why should you care? Brawl coming to Arena is great - and a net positive for everyone - for a variety of reasons. 

Singleton formats are just fun. We’ve had them come through on Arena as special events from time to time, and they’re always entertaining - well except for the Rat and Petitioner decks. Having a Commander adds an extra layer of depth to the game play. They're also much more accessible to newer players, because you only need one copy of each card, instead of 3-4. 

If you enjoy brewing, Brawl is a fantastic format. It’s narrow enough to give you starting parameters, but broad enough to let you really express your creativity, and your individual preferences for play style and color.

Even if you’re not interested in playing Brawl, it’s serving a currently unrepresented segment of the Magic community - Commander players. While we can be confident that we’re not going to see any multiplayer formats on Arena anytime in the near future, it’s good to give an onramp to Singleton fans. That just means more people who’ll be enjoying Arena, which means that Arena will keep going strong. 

I’m looking forward to brewing up some Brawl decks, and I’ll see you in the Arena. 

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another. 

High Time for Oathbreaker

Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

For my first foray into Oathbreaker, I decided to put some Oathy goodness into an old favorite. My very first Legacy deck was mono-Red Burn. But my second one was High Tide. I was going to build a High Tide Oathbreaker deck, but, ALAS! High Tide is banned! Imagine my dismay! So here’s my adaptation of that deck into this new format.

Is it expensive? Hells yes!

Is it functional? Damned if I know!

So let’s muck through the Swamp together, shall we?

I went with Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver as the Oathbreaker. The only strictly Blue and Black walkers are Ashiok and Tezzeret, and obviously Tezzeret really doesn’t make sense in a deck like this. I went with Nightmare Weaver over Dream Render, because he seemed more functional overall, however, both of them are mostly there to set the colors for the deck. Any additional Milling they do is incidental. Although, if you can ultimate Ashiok, you might be able to clear your opponent’s hand of possible counterspells or other disruption.

High Tide Bubbling Muck is the Signature Spell, and the one around which the deck is crafted. Muck makes all Swamps tap for an additional {B} - of note, the dual lands (Underground Sea, Watery Grave, and Fetid Pools) can be tapped for {U}, but will still produce the additional {B}. It didn’t occur to me at first how relevant it is that you’ll have this in your Command Zone each time after you cast it. The more frequently you can fire this off, the more explosive your deck will be. We’re going to use all that Swampy goodness to fuel the “X” cost in our spells.

So how does this deck win? Well, basically you either make your opponents draw out their entire deck, or you Mill them out (Milling, for the uninitiated means putting cards from your Library into your Graveyard, named after the original card which did this, Millstone).

One of the most useful cards in this deck is Blue Sun’s Zenith, because as part of the resolution, it shuffles back into your deck. That means that you can draw out cards to fuel your combo, but still have it in your deck to use as a win con. Also, you can use it to take out multiple opponents. There’s several other “target player draws X cards” to go along with Blue Sun.

The way you generate the mana you need for your X spells, is by first casting Bubbling Muck, and then untapping your lands. Cards like Mind over Matter, Time Spiral, and Finale of Revelation take care of this for you.

There’s only a handful of creatures in the deck. Snapcaster Mage for value. Cloud of Faeries, untaps lands. If you’re generating enough mana, Palinchron can be cast and bounced repeatedly, untapping seven lands each time, and actually netting more mana with each cycle. Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, combined with cards like Pour over the Pages, Mind over Matter, and Frantic Search, it will shuffle your entire Graveyard back into your Library, to let the fun continue.

I’ve also included a few lost-CMC milling enchantments to help you on your way to victory, and a Cyclonic Rift, just in case your opponents’ board states get out of hand.

With High Tide banned, we have to rely on Bubbling Muck, and our Blue Mana production is not as good as in a mono-colored build. To help this out, I’ve included a copy of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, which adds the Swamp land type to all of our Islands. I’ve also included a copy of Expedition Map, and a copy of Tolaria West to help fetch it up.

Well, thanks for going on this romp with me :) This list probably isn't optimized, but it was fun to put together. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/high-tea/

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod.

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another.

London has Fallen

In July we get Core Set 2020, and along with that - the London Mulligan. 

The rules on Mulligans have changed greatly over the years. Back in the day, the way it worked was that if you had all lands, or no lands in your opening hand, you could reveal it, shuffle and draw 7 again. Now, not only did this not allow you to dump poor hands that still had a land or two, in formats like Legacy and Vintage, there were Combo decks which could abuse this. When you have a deck called “Oops All Spells”, it’s pretty easy to hit a hand with no Lands, LOL. 

The longest running Mulligan rule we had was the Paris rule, where you’d Mulligan down one card each turn. This was accidentally adopted at PT Paris in 1997, because Wizards neglected to take it out of the player’s information for the event. In 2015 we adopted the Vancouver Mulligan, where you got to Scry after you kept.

Now, we have a new system coming, and the wording of the rules can be a little confusing, but it basically works this way. Each time you Mulligan, you draw 7 new cards. Then after you decide to keep, you no longer get to Scry, but you put cards from your hand onto the bottom of your library (in any order), so you actually start with the same number of cards you’d have with the old Paris and Vancouver systems. 

So if you - 

• Mulligan once, you put one card on the bottom, and start with six.
• Mulligan twice, you put two cards on the bottom, and start with five.
• Mulligan thrice, you put three cards on the bottom, and start with four. 

Etc…

So what does all this mean for Arena players? 

Basically, all good stuff. By digging one card deeper each time you Mulligan, you’re getting more card selection. You’re increasing your odds of getting a playable starting hand. This will mean fewer non-games from having to keep a mediocre Mulligan. 

I have some concerns about how the London Mulligan may impact formats like Legacy, Vintage, and maybe Commander. It seems possible that it will favor Combo decks, which rely much more heavily on getting a good opening hand, and in some cases, can even pull off a turn 1 win with the right combination of just a few cards. But, Wizards has been testing it extensively on MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online), and so far the data doesn’t seem to indicate any major problems. 

One pitfall you should watch out for - just because Mulligans are going to be a little more forgiving, that doesn’t mean you should Mulligan more aggressively, or Mulligan hands you might have kept under the old system. The card disadvantage from tossing your first opening hand is still a huge detriment. 

I believe that the London Mulligan is a welcome improvement to Magic, and especially to Arena. It’s going to allow us all to just play more Magic, and that is always a good thing. 

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another. 

Modern Sensibilities

With Modern Horizons on…. well, on the horizon, some of you may take an interest in the Modern format. But maybe it’s always seemed like you could never afford to buy into it. Aren’t decks like hundreds or thousands of dollars?

Well, yes and no. 

It’s true that if you want get the cash to buy into one of the very best, highly competitive, Tier 1 decks, you’ll probably have to sell your kidneys on eBay. But all is not lost. Modern is a wildly diverse format, and almost anything goes for decks you can play. I’m going to give you some tips on how to make decks more affordable, and I’ll finish with an example of a truly budget build. Granted, you won’t be taking down a Mythic Championship, but you won’t get completely run over, either. 

Mana, Mana, mo Mana

Much like in real life, one of the biggest money pits in Modern is the land. One good strategy here is to play a mono-colored deck, and there are a ton of classic archetypes available. However, if you really just need to go 2+ colors, you have some options. As an aside, multicolor lands that produce Blue tend to be higher in price than the others in any given cycle. So you may want to keep that in mind when designing or selecting a deck. 

Despite some recent reprints, Fetch lands - especially the Zendikar fetches are frightfully expensive, with some being almost $100 each.  

The Shock lands are much more reasonable these days, thanks to heavy printing in the three Ravnica blocks. They’re sitting anywhere from $8-$15, but even that’s a bit too much for a true budget build. 

The Check lands (or Buddy lands) are also quite good. They’ll very frequently enter untapped, and they’re fairly inexpensive at around $3-$5. But we can do better.  

A good place to start to really go budget is with the Pain lands. These were the old go-to Rare duals before the Shock lands were printed (well, besides the OG Alpha Duals). They tap for colorless, and can tap for two colors, but deal 1 damage to you in the process. They’re super cheap, often just a dollar or two apiece because of frequent printings and low demand. 

Another good set of lands are the Scry lands, or Temples from Theros. They enter tapped, but they Scry when they enter, so if you don’t need fast Mana, there’s some value add there. These are sometimes fairly cheap, but sometimes more around the price of the Check lands. It depends entirely on which one you’re buying. If you want to go super-budget for your color fixing, there are a huge number of dual-color common lands that enter tapped. Almost every set or block has a cycle of them. You don’t get the scry, but if you’re playing a slower deck, these can still work in a pinch. 

And then there’s the Slow lands. This is a pair of cycles of lands from Tempest and Kamigawa that enter untapped, tap normally for colorless, and can be tapped for color, except they won’t untap on your next turn. They aren’t great, but they work and they’re pennies each.

There are also a whole bunch of different cycles and styles of color fixing lands available at Common and Uncommon, like the “Tainted” lands, that tap for colorless, or two colors (one of which is always black) if you control a Swamp, or the “Vivid” lands, that enter with charge counters which you can spend for colored mana. I highly encourage you hop onto the Gatherer and brows through the “land” card type. You may find something there that peaks your interest :)

Tribal Tats 

Tribes can definitely be your friend when looking to budget build. In Magic, “Tribe” basically just means making all the creatures in your deck the same type, and it’s very popular among Magic players. So much so, that people were building tribes before they were actually supported by the creatures in the game in any meaningful way. One great boon that budget Tribal decks just got is Unclaimed Territory from Ixalan. You name a creature type when it enters, and then you can use it for any color to cast creatures of that type, and it’s under $2. 

The more famous Modern Tribes, like Elves, Humans, Spirits and Merfolk are great decks, but can be prohibitively expensive to build. Fortunately, there’s literally dozens of others to choose from. You can go budget Humans - since they’ve been in the game since Alpha. Werewolves, Vampires, Ninjas, Snakes, Kor, and so many more. You can also go with the creature “class” and build Tribal (in Magic, creatures generally have a “race” like human, and a “class” like wizard). There’s Artificers, Rebels, Wizards, Pirates (which just got a HUGE boon in Ixalan), Allies, Barbarians, Warriors, and - as with races - so many more. 

Stick with the Classics

As I mentioned in regards to mono-colored decks, there’s a bunch of classic decks that you can look to for budget builds. White Weenie (a “swarm” style deck, nothing but small, white creatures), and Burn (erm - do I really need to explain how Burn works :) ) come immediately to mind. They both have been historically viable decks, with low cost to entry points. In fact, right now (as I’m writing this) you could pick up the mono-White Challenger deck, and have the foundation for a decent White Weenie deck. With a few little, and inexpensive upgrades, like Glorious Anthem, or Thraben Inspector, you can really amp up its power.  

None of that Digital crap for me

Another strategy for lowering the cost of a deck is to look for analogs to more powerful cards. The favored Black discard spells in Legacy are Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize. However, in a pinch, you could sub in cards like Duress, and Despise. Can’t afford Fatal Push and Dismember? Well there’s tons of cheap, Black removal with Doom Blade (a classic), Terror, Snuff Out, Ghastly Demise, Sinister Concoction, Vendetta, and so much more. Can’t afford Force of Negation and Remand? There’s Mana Leak, and Logic Knot. 

For almost every card printed there’s a analog version of it. Some of them are really bad, but some are definitely playable.

Far Afield

You can also look to other formats for inspiration for building a Modern deck. For example, in Canadian Highlander, there’s a deck called “Flying Men” (so named after the card Flying Men). It’s a Tempo deck that looks to resolve evasive 1/1 creatures (in this case, flying) that cast for 1 CMC, and just protect them with counterspells until you win. 

Blast from the Past

Check out winning Standard decks from past years. The Modern format includes cards from 2003 on forward, so there’s like 16 years worth of Magic to look through. Many of those decks basically disappeared when they rotated out of Standard - hence dropping in price - but some may still be viable. 

Limited Options

Lastly, take a look at Limited synergies and archetypes. Many of the cards in Limited (Drafts and Sealed), are very fun to play with, even if they’re not quite Tier 1. In Dominaria, for example, there’s a great Black/Green Saproling deck, which you might almost be able to build for free, if you know someone who drafted the set heavily. In Shadows Over Innistrad, the “Clue” deck was great fun to play. 

Modern is a fantastic format, which you can have great fun playing, even if you’re not rolling in cash. Hopefully, this guide will help get you on your way. 

Now here’s the sample deck that I promised. It’s a budget version of the “Soul Sisters” deck. The purpose of it is to gain so much life, that your opponent doesn’t have enough cards in their deck to finish you off. I’ve left out a couple of powerful cards, like Serra’s Ascendant to keep the costs down. There’s no single card in the deck over $6, and the total cost of the deck I have listed is around $36 (not counting Basic Plains). I’ve also added Aetherfulx Reservoir, because it’s a funny alt-win condition. 

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/23-05-19-budget-soul-sisters/

Thanks for taking the time to hang with me. 

I’m Tweeting @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another. 

The Drawkeep Step

I’d like you to go with me on a journey. A journey not of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey to a wondrous realm of imagination. There’s a signpost up ahead! Next stop, the “Drawkeep” step.

Arena isn’t granular in the way it represents all the parts of a turn. I’m going to write another post about that, but it got me thinking. 

What if there was no Upkeep step?

Now, hold on. I know what you’re thinking - “Sacrilege!” Right? 

Hear me out, though. What happens in the Upkeep step do that couldn’t just as easily be done in the Draw step? Arena essentially does this all ready. The only time you ever actually see the Upkeep step on Arena, is when there’s a relevant triggered ability. How would losing the Upkeep step - or rather, merging the Upkeep and Draw steps - affect the various formats and/or specific cards?  

As I’ve been thinking about this, working through how to handle “at the beginning of your upkeep” triggers, and I this is the change I’m proposing for this thought experiment. 

*EDIT*

After ruminating on this a bit, I realized two things. First, that I kind of have it backwards, and second, that I didn't clearly articulate the positive reasons for making the change. 

We wouldn't really be eliminating the Upkeep step, we'd be eliminating the Draw step, and putting the draw as a Turn Based action at the beginning of the Upkeep. That way fewer cards would need errata - almost none in fact. 

The two positive impacts this would have are this -

1. It would smooth out and speed up the beginning of the turn. Frequently, players will spend time messing with the top of their deck, or making other decisions before drawing in formats like Legacy.

2. It shifts pre-main phase decision making away from guesswork, and toward strategic decision making. Aether Vial is a perfect example of this kind of situation. Before deciding whether to add another charge counter, you'd know what card you'd drawn for the turn. 

Let’s go on a deep dive together, shall we?

I’m going to group Limited and Standard together, because they’re both represented on Area. Honestly, I don’t think that losing the Upkeep step would affect either greatly. As it is on Arena, the only time you’ll even see the Upkeep step, is when there’s a relevant triggered ability. Will it matter if those triggers go on the stack before or after you draw your first card? 

Well, maybe. There’s four cards in Standard - at the time of this writing - which I think would be adversely affected by this rules change. 

Sphinx of Foresight, and Eyes Everywhere both have you Scry during your upkeep. However, neither of these cards sees play outside of Limited, and they’re both Rares, so they get played infrequently even then. 

Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage becomes significantly harder to make work, but, again, it sees very minimal play in Constructed. 

Search for Azcanta. This is a big one. It’s heavily played, not only in Standard, but in Modern and possibly Legacy. If you can’t Scry before your draw, then it becomes far less useful. There’s two possible ways you could errata this, and cards like this. One, you could move the Scry to the End Step instead of the Upkeep Step. In the case of Search, that would actually make the card much better because you’d proceed into your opponent’s turn with the knowledge of what your next draw will be, or having binned a bad draw.

However, the fact that this or any other single card would get nerfed, isn't good cause to reject the idea. Magic has seen many rules changes over the years, some of them quite significant. Hell, they did away with the entire card type "Interrupt" with the 6th edition rules update, and artifacts used to "turn off" when they were tapped. 

As a rule, I don’t think Limited would be affected in any substantive way - with the caveat that some Cubes could. But since Cube is such a highly individualized experience, it’s really impossible to make any evaluation about it as a collective format.

Moving into the non-rotating formats like Modern, Legacy, and Commander, the impact is far greater. I’m not going to look at Vintage, because I don’t really have an experience in that format. The most obvious mechanic that comes to mind is Upkeep itself, and by extension, Cumulative Upkeep. Honestly, I really don’t think this would functionally change how those cards work in any format. I suppose having drawn you card for the turn would give you more information to work with when making your decision to pay an Upkeep cost or not.

Having the draw happen before you can take any other actions greatly impacts the use of Fetch Lands, especially in relation to things like Delver of Secrets. One common strategic play is to allow the Delver trigger to resolve, and then fetch away the card, if you didn’t want to draw it. Also, it would make fixing the top of your deck to ensure a Delver flip significantly more difficult. There’s an argument to be made that this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, LOL.  

There’s a few other upkeep-timed mechanics that, again, I think this would have little effect on. Pacts have to be paid for, no matter what. Vanishing and Fading will happen no matter what - there’s no strategic decisions to be made there. 

Likewise, there’s only a handful of Echo cards which get played competitively goblins - only two that I can think of off the top of my head, both goblins - and the decision to pay  the Echo cost is typically not affected by whether you’ve drawn your card for the turn. 

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. Setting aside that this is a multi-thousand dollar card that sees a limited amount of play in Legacy and Vintage, what are we to make of how it would be impacted by the Drawkeep step? I’m not sure it would greatly. Again, you’d have a little extra information before choosing which creatures to pay for, but if this is a problem card for your deck, then I’m not sure that little bit of info will help. You need to remove the Tabernacle entirely. The implications for Kataki, War’s Wage would be the same, I think. 

Mana Vault would require functional errata. It explicitly has a function during the Upkeep step, and a separate function during the Draw step. But a fairly minor rules change could address this. Just merge the two abilities. So you keep this - “Mana Vault doesn't untap during your untap step.” Then instead of this -  “At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay 4. If you do, untap Mana Vault. At the beginning of your draw step, if Mana Vault is tapped, it deals 1 damage to you.” it would change to “At the beginning of your draw step, if Mana Vault is tapped, it deals 1 damage to you. You may pay 4 to untap Mana Vault and prevent this damage.” 

The 8 Rack which is a fringe Modern and Legacy deck to being with, and relies on discard to force your opponent into having an empty hand during their upkeep would get worse. Probably would be unplayable.

Glacial Chasm is a card that gets played in the Legacy Lands deck. Again, it’s basically just an Upkeep cost, and I don’t think that drawing an additional card would impact your decision to pay that cost or not. 

The Innistrad “werewolf” ability would trigger in the Draw step instead of in the Upkeep step, but again, I don’t think that would have any real functional or strategic impact on the cards as a whole. 

There’s a whole bunch more cards that I think would be impacted in minimal ways - mostly by the advantage of having slightly more info before making decisions which would have been made in the Upkeep step. I’ll list them down below, with a simple “better/worse/same” assessment, but I think I’ve touched on enough to draw some conclusions. Keep in mind, that this is a thought experiment. Even if I feel that it would be a good change, I’m not trying to advocate for that change. 

So on the whole, would merging the Upkeep and Draw steps be detrimental to the game? Well, Yes and No. Some cards would definitely suffer a negative impact, like Search for Ascanta. Some would actually benefit, for instance when making decisions about paying Echo or Upkeep costs. It also would streamline gameplay, as we’ve seen on Arena. 

But I think that the big question really is this - would any benefits the Drawkeep step bring be substantial enough to justify trying to make that change? Every major rules change that’s ever happened in Magic has brought problems with it, and been controversial. The Sixth Edition rules update, the Eighth Edition card frame change, the M10 rules update, the multiple changes to how Legends work. Each of these is has been a value add, but not without cost. 

In the end, I don’t think that this change would bring benefits outweighing the cost. I wouldn’t advocate having the Drawkeep step. But this, and really “outside the box” ideas are always worth considering. Just because we’ve always done something a certain way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way, or even the best way. 

Learning to think in unconventional ways will help you become a better Magic player, and we reject unconventional ideas out of hand at our own peril. It’s amazing to see a newer player when they realize that they can actually kill their opponent with Sign in Blood.

Well, thanks for taking the time to listen to me ramble. As always, Have Fun, Play On, and be kind to one another.

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 


Drop of Honey - Same
Cursed Scroll - Worse
Smokestack - Better 
Barren Glory - Worse (almost non-functional) 
Masticore (and friends) - Better  
Jötun Grunt - same 
Bottled Cloister - Same 
Oath of Druids - Same
Shrine of Burning Rage - Better
As Foretold - Better
Emeria, The Sky Ruin - Same
Inventor’s Fair - Same
Dark Confidant - Really? Could Bob get any better? I think not. It’s perfection incardnte.