Beware, I Live!

Seriously, what's with
this card art? BITE
SOMETHING!

Been a while since I posted here. After I made my last post, I wound up playing a different deck due to missing two of the cards I needed (Vines of Vastwood has mysteriously become difficult to find... fancy that!). Then two FNM's ago, I finally did get to play it, and I guess I just didn't feel like blogging about it. A bit anti-climatic reason wise, but there you go.

While I am going to keep RG Infect and the WWN model in mind for the future, I don't think it's competitively viable in its current form. It's not a bad deck, but it's not consistent enough. Assault Strobe, while good in conjunction with pump spells and Livewire Lash, is kind of dull on its own when most of the creatures have low power. Lightning Bolt is nice, but it falls a bit short of fully justifying the use of red. Splashing black would at least give more consistent forms of creature removal, even if the duel lands are less user friendly.

I still like the concept, though. I'm hoping the next set gives red some better options (if for no other reason than to make red decks that aren't RDW more common), and increases the number of artifact creatures with infect. I'd love to make a viable white infect deck.

Last week, I played black infect, which was more consistent in playability. It had pump spells, discard spells, lots of little critters, and even Skittles! I made the huge mistake, however, of not including Sign in Blood or Mimic Vat. Infect creatures are very prone to removal, especially in a black deck where you're likely pumping power but not toughness. As such, one needs to be ready to replace lost critters faster than they can get taken out, and a lack of card advantage and/or reliable creature spawning meant I couldn't pull that off.

I actually want to retry it with Sign in Blood (Mimic Vat is cool, but I think card advantage would serve me better), but there's a good chance I'm going to bust out knights this week. Or elves. It'll depend on my mood on Friday, I guess, but I've been wanting to make an elf deck since high school and finally have the cards to make a halfway decent one, and people were talking smack about knights prior to the Scars release and I think my old knight deck might be even better post release.

I really wish there was just one more standard tournament each week in my area. There are legacy tournaments I can play in, but legacy frustrates me. Any environment where combos like Sneak Attack + Emrakul are possible is an environment where I'm going to get frustrated even if I win, and that's spoken from experience. In standard, I usually have fun whether I win or lose so long as my deck is actually functional.

FNM September 17 - Wrath of The Stalemates

Knight Exemplar: "Knights know no
fear! Wait, what does that new
ability in Scars do? ...Son of a..."

Last night was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at Friday Night Magic (FNM). I had a 50/50 win/loss record over five rounds, but for most of the games I lost, I went down swinging. Or, more accurately, went down sitting with a solid defense that my opponents simply couldn’t get through.

I was playing mono-white knights. Strangely for a white deck, it has zero life gain in it, but it can still be very difficult to kill off. Between Knight Exemplar, Brave The Elements, Day of Judgment, Condemn, and Journey to Nowhere, I could set up a defensive position that could keep me alive via stalemate long past my opponent’s will to live, particularly if I managed to get two Knight Exemplars into play.

These stalemates resulted in some fun “I just won’t die” scenarios. One stalemate against an ally deck with life gain lasted long enough for my opponent to reach 142 life. It would have been more, but I kept fruitlessly clawing away at him with a Cloud Crusader.

My last game lasted 32 turns, over two-thirds of which was spent with me effectively untouchable while at 4 life. A Day of Judgment would have ended the stalemate in my favor, but he managed to give a twice-pumped Steppe Lynx protection from white with Emerge Unscathed first, dealing just enough damage to finish me.

Speaking of Steppe Lynx, I might have to make a cat deck after the release of Scars. Granted, some of these cats would have to be humanoid, but I’ve wanted to make a cat deck for a while and this could be my chance. Assuming there are enough white cat creatures for it, it will be a white-blue deck. The reason for this is a suggestion from that last opponent who said that Diminish should be included for its artwork alone.

Many minutes later, long after the discussion regarding my cat deck had supposedly ended, I commented that Mighty Leap would also be mandatory. You can't have a kitty deck without cats jumping around and getting where they're not supposed to be, darn it!

I won’t be playing FNM next week, as the Scars Prerelease is that Saturday and Sunday. I only plot to play one day, but I might play in as many as two tournaments on Saturday just because I already have a deck in mind based on spoilers and it’s almost exclusively stuff from the new set. Crafty Wizards…