The Stack #59- Y U No Play?

Happy Weekend Once Again Zoners!

Like I always say, "Three's a Pattern," so I hope you're getting used to that old Stack Saturday. Today's episode marks our third since we returned from that less-than-glorious hiatus of not sharing our tech.

Today, Tom, Gramps, and I found ourselves with a pretty good topic- Commanders we'd most like to see get played. There are a lot of signals that get sent from the pre-game "shuffle and flip," and whether it's indicative of an exploited matchup, or just sheer excitement for a Legend that's been generally unloved across the current state of sanctioned formats, there's a lot of "feels" to experience when we step into our Kitchen Table Sandbox.

Anywho, let's get cracking- THIS IS THE STACK!

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
Don't think I have ever lost to this card. Not sure how I would. This is something of a running joke between Landdrops and myself.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS DOWN
Haha. JorK the Dork!

I've tried hard, searched far and wide to build Boros, and at some point, I'm gonna have to give up.

JorK is where I draw the line. I guess I'd be happy to see someone flip this up, but I do think this card has a lot in common with its artwork- it's clear, crisp, and bizarrely evoking, but still found wanting to be better.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I'm going to be the contrarian on this one, but I see potential. Boros and aggro may both be jokes in what we Commander players call (loosely) a metagame - with, admittedly, fairly good reason, but Metalcraft is super easy to activate in a world of T1 Sol Ring, Boros Signet, T2 Sad Robot/Swiftfoot Boots/Fireshrieker/whatever followed by T3 Jor Kadeen swinging for the fences. Sure, that's the dream opening, yet cheap-but-useful artifacts abound in the format and the Boros colours can both Voltron fairly well or churn out tokens at a hectic pace, making JK's own pump effect rather potent. Pack in guys to increase the pump or grant evasion like Agrus Kos, Legion Loyalist and Victory's Herald, and you've got yourself a stew.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
"I have been brought to this place and I cannot leave. I may be free of amber, but I am still in prison."

That's Mangara's flavor text, and I think it's poetically relevant to the strife he faces in our format. Why this dude isn't more common, I have no clue. His mana cost, P/T, and ability make him the PERFECT fit to combo off with sac outlets and Mono-White mainstays like Karmic Guide, Sun Titan, and Reveillark. With the way his activated ability works, there are so many ways to stack triggers and play board police, even if you just end up sending him back to the Command Zone. I know White has Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Brimaz, and some other tribal and Voltron types, but seriously- I find it really strange that we don't see nearly enough of Mangara in the metagame.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I really don't want to see cheap, repeatable exile effects on the other side of the table. If nobody sleeves this dude up, I'll be happy. Unless it's me, in which case, bow before me, foolish mortals!

Grandpa Growth - THUMBS UP
I have played a fair amount of this card in 8.5 Tails decks. I wouldn't ever consider making it my commander, but the card is quite good in my estimation. It isn't premium removal, so don't misunderstand. It is substitute that can serve multiple purposes. White decks in particular have great ways to make this a relevant threat when you don't need it to exile problem targets.

TOM

Tom- THUMBS UP
There are really only three guys on the list of dragons in these colours that I'd consider playing, and two of them are only useful when they die. It's not that Silumgar is necessarily bad as a card -  in 5-colour Scion or a Nicol Bolas/Crosis Grixis dragon tribal I can see him doing solid work, but as a general I think he's pretty laughable. A temporary -1/-1 in EDH is not exactly stunning utility to build a deck around, particularly when it needs otherwise weak support cards to make the effect stronger. If someone slaps this down on my table, then unless I'm running a token build and have sustained a strong enough blow to the head that I forgot to include pump effects, I'm going to feel pretty safe ignoring it.

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP 
Yeah, I know what I said about Silumgar being derped in design in my Legendary Review. I don't take back what I said, but also recall I talked about how good Hexproof, Flying and that weird 3/7 body are together.

By himself, Silly-gar is gonna get rid of all those pesky 1 toughness tokens. Despite thinking I was going to build either Atarka Dragonstorm or Kolaghan Dash Beatz, I've actually broke ground on building this deck because there are two sweet cards unique to Silumgar that no other Dragon in the FRF cycle has- Xenograft and Conspiracy, which make that creature type thing basically irrelevant. Add in all the blue Riptide creatures from Legions which mess with creature type, and we've got ourselves a little stew going. Look forward to this one, because I think it's going to be a lot more compelling than we all thought.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
I won't be playing it. Basically every time I say that, which happens quite a bit, it means that I have very little confidence in my opponent. I can think of at least a dozen other generals in this color combination. I think that people know this isn't good enough for Commander, but they are just playing it because it is new, or maybe they are...either way I understand. I am not immune to the allure of fun. I want to try new things and get outside the comfort zone every once in a while. Still though, I don't want to feel like I need a list of excuses for why I built a deck.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
Basically every time someone decides to play a group hug deck, they are signalling to me that they aren't serious about winning the game. There are certainly ways to manipulate the political landscape of the game to your advantage, but there are even more ways to just outright win the game no matter how many players are at the table.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS DOWN
The first time you see Pheldagriff, you laugh, and think or say all the things GG mentioned. Every time afterward, you think about how uninteresting it is to be given carte blanche in Magical Christmas Land, and how basically the only winner in a Pheldagriff game is the player who gets to play immediately after the Pheldagriff player. Even if the player is bad at Magic, or the deck is actually bad.

I'm not salty about Pheldagriff, but about his association with bad Magic strategy being reinforced and supported by another quality I find useless- politics. I hope to be able to write my thoughts about the latter either here or on CommanderCast. I'm not on the "let's ban this archetype," but I do think that much like Trade Secrets, the game is a lot more fun without the stereotypical "Pheldagriff player."

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
I am intensely suspicious of this goofy-looking dude.Sure, he seems friendly, and he hands out gifts like a cheating spouse desperately hoping that enough shiny trinkets will make them feel less guilty, but I've got my eye on him. This is mostly because despite seemingly every player who runs him doing so in a Group Hug build, he seems to me like a potentially dangerous Voltron General.

A 4/4 for four is a good start, and optional Flying/Trample are solid attributes for Voltron. The option to bounce him to avoid removal or Wrath is also pretty sweet. While the activated abilities do give a little bit here and a little bit there to opponents, two life/a weenie token/a single card aren't so strong in EDH that they're painful to give away, and the bulk of those won't help to stop a flying, trampling Phelly anyway. Personally I'd play the deck as a rattlesnake ambush, disguising it as a Hug-style deck to dodge any early game hate while using cards like Well of Ideas that seem friendly but actually benefit me more than my opponents, then pumping Uncle Phel with Auras (because his colours are truly sweet for that kind of play and unlike Equipment, we can keep them in hand until we need them and retain the element of surprise) and smashing a shocked opponent out of the game.

Bottom line - beware of hippos bearing gifts.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
I wouldn't be unhappy to play against Keranos, but I wouldn't be thrilled either. This color combination houses some of the most brutal combos in the format and 99% of the counterspells. I have played several different Izzet decks and I have rarely been disappointed. Regardless of your choice of general, this deck has potential to dominate.

That being said, I would be much more scared to see Niv-Mizzet or Jhoira. Although, playing against God cards is super annoying for most decks.

Tom- THUMBS UP
He draws cards, he smites weenies and utility dudes, and he's indestructible. And as GG says, he's in a colour pairing able to pull off some seriously unpleasant business. I think his colours are why I like his ability so much; it's trivially easy to stack the top of your library in Izzet, ensuring you get the effect you want every turn.

On the flipside, his devotion is harder to hit in a pairing more focused around non-permanent spells, we're getting more and more Deglamer and Deicide effects to deal with pesky gods, and by himself he isn't essential to any of the really unpleasant combo decks I can think of.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
This is an expensive dude right now, but aesthetically is one of the Gods that I thought looked the part. He's more Zeus than Heliod, and matches that point mechanically too. I haven't seen a whole lot of lists on the internet trying to get ambitious, but I think that's just because of the price barrier.  

Also- Queue Song of Storms!



That wraps 'er all up for this week, so do your thing in the comments if you're outraged by anything we like or dislike.

ALSO- BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Grandpa and I are getting ready to drag our Luddite attitudes into the Wave of Vitriol known as Twitter. I'm already there, you can find and follow me @unclelanddrops, where I'll be doing any of the following things:

-Posting pictures of silly alternate artwork I made or found.
-Making up goofy nicknames for cards.
-Stuff happening to me or friends across Commander/MTG outlets.
-Crazy ideas for decklists, and links to actual decklists I find cool.
-A 24/7 place for you to share with me your awesome Magic-related tom-foolery, or ask me to help you with a deck tech.

So if you like/do any of this stuff, click that follow button to keep the party going by following me @unclelanddrops. Look for GG's info soon as well.

Pass.

-The TGZ Staff

Card Corner: Mark of Fury

Happy Day o' Thor, Zoners! Welcome back to another edition of Card Corner, the place where ya boi Landdrops spotlights some of his strangest experiments in technology.

Today's card is one I've had stashed away for a long time now- Mark of Fury.

This card was originally in Heartless Hidetsugu's first 99 when I built the deck a couple years ago. I found Mark of Fury somewhere on the Internet, looking through other mono-Red lists that were adjacent to what I was looking to accomplish with HH, and I needed Haste so I could blast the table and accomplish my goals.

However, because it's an enchantment, and a pretty decent one that can be recycled for something that resembles card advantage, the incentive to remove HH went up.

Additionally, I realized that this card was doing something else that I didn't necessarily want to do, which was blast the table on my own turn. What I've found as I've played Hidetsugu is that taking damage before I start slugging the table is optimal, and in order to give myself a chance to win, I needed to keep that time-value option open as long as possible.

Although this is a great time to talk about Mark of Fury, considering that Heroic and Dash are in Standard right now, meaning that us Commander players are testing it out, I'm not sure we'll ever get another card printed like this. From flavor and color pie perspectives, I'm just not thinking that another enchantment like this will get printed, much less in red. Urza block is home to a lot of broken, weird things that Wizards Lead Designer Mark Rosewater has said they will never do again. While it's not Treachery, the value of this card has scaled well because of the power given to creatures, so much that I believe this would no longer be a Common, if they were to ever reprint this.

However, it doesn't mean we can't enjoy and abuse what we've got. There are a lot of times, I've found, in playing red decks where I said, "Damn, I wish I had Haste!" Well, in case you didn't know, we always did!

After finding this card, the problem diminished quickly. Whether's it's been in HH, its new home in my Common/Uncommon Uril, the Miststalker deck, or even designs I've been less proud of, like Herioc Anax & Cymede, Mark of Fury has been a solid play for support. Because Haste is a time sensitive mechanic, value is massive. Coupled with a cheap additional cost of one red per creature to cast it, and our opponents have a serious problem on their hands.

From a design perspective, this may not be in Red's wheelhouse, but the spirit and sentiment do produce something. The pressure and tempo this Mark of Fury creates for typically not-fast Inferno Titans or Utvara Hellkites is exactly the flavor of red, and the fact that they've continued to design cards that produce this effect with more attention to the color's restriction (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Feldon of the Third Path, Flamerush Rider, Splinter Twin, Heat Shimmer), demonstrate cleaner precedent moving forward. Even Archwing Dragon and Dash are much sleeker implements of the card advantage going on here.

Anyway, this card has been really good for me, and I hope it will be for you too. It's another cheap spell that's got a market value of around a dime in US, and I can't imagine this being hard to find either, seeing as how it's a common and all. So pick a copy up and check it out.

Also, this week CMDR Decks did a spotlight on my Heartless Hidetsugu deck. Here's the link if you want to check out what it looks like today.

Heartless Hidetsugu CMDR Decks

Pass.

-UL

In General: MTG Economics Part 2: Secondary Markets

Hello and welcome to another In General, the Sunday segment where we can discuss anything and everything that relates to Magic the Gathering. I try to steer clear of the world of MtG finance, particularly in my writing. I deal with finance all day at work and I don't like to mix business and pleasure. But last week, I gave a discussion about why Magic sealed product don't experience a true market, particularly with regards to Magic Online.

This is part two of a four part saga about finance and Magic.
If you missed part one, check it out here: The Primary Market Price

In short, there is inside manipulation occurring that limits supply to artificially hold up prices. Obviously, this will have a significant impact on the value of your collection and your ability to increase that value over time. In this article, I will be explaining some of the problems with trying to use Magic as an investment in the Secondary Market, continuing my metaphor of using Magic cards as securities.

A Separation of Sellers and Buyers

First, let me explain what that means. A Primary Offering, is one that comes from the original issuer or producer, i.e. Wizards. Cards being sold from Wizards to stores are said to sold in the Primary market. A Secondary offering is one that happens between two parties who are not the original issuer. E.g. I sell a copy of Gifts Ungiven to Uncle Landdrops for a Snickers bar. You can see how this ends up creating an environment where there are issuers, brokers, and consumers, who all interact to create a market for the product.

If this sounds complex, don't adjust your TV screen, financial markets are so complex that they often become opaque. This makes it very difficult for the average consumer to make money buying and selling products in an open market. If you have ever known someone who has lost a lot of money speculating on the price of Magic cards you're about to learn why.

Factors that Limit Profits

Ask Price - This is the price that you have to pay if you want to buy a card from a dealer. The asking price is going to be as close to the real, current 'market price'.

Bid Price - This is the price that you would be given if you wanted to sell a card to a dealer. It will always be lower than the asking price because there is an expense to running a business and reselling the card. The bid price is closer to the real 'value' of a card than the ask price, but will usually be far below the 'market price'

The way to easily remember these two is this: You have to pay whatever the dealer ASKS, but when you sell, you will take whatever the highest BID is.

Spread - This is the difference between the ask and bid prices. This covers the dealer's expenses and profits and is often thought of as a sales charge. The spread can vary in size, but make no mistake, it is always a POSITIVE NUMBER. Businesses cannot reliably sustain transactions that don't make money.

The only way that you can really exchange a card for its real value is to trade it for another card that you value equally. The problem with this is that you are trading one SUBJECTIVELY VALUED, SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT for another one. Because of all the associated factors that are outside your control, it is going to be very difficult to amass any real economic gains over the long term.

Arbitrage - This is the act of buying something and then selling it in a different market to take advantage of a difference in pricing. These differences are a result of an inequality of information and only exist for a short time.

This is the holy grail of mercantilism: instant profit. The problem is that the prices are moving constantly and you might be the person who has the bad information, which creates a large risk.

So here is the squeeze. If you have to purchase the product at a premium and sell it at a discount, you are going to lose money unless the actual value of that product goes up dramatically. Sales charges cut directly into your gains. Also, some of the underlying appreciation of your card's value is being stolen away by successful arbitrage, which acts to quickly stabilize any movement in prices. Anyone who wants to really make some money buy investing in Magic has to take a broader approach and invest for the long term.

So there it is. This isn't an exhaustive list obviously, but I just want to give you a look at some of the problems that can stop you from making a profit trading Magic cards, even if it was heavy on theory.

That is all for this week. How are you enjoying the series so far? As always, your feedback is appreciated. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I will see you next week for my discussion of how to successfully invest in MTG.

-GG

The Stack #58- Favored In Fate

Happy Weekend Zoners!

Today, we're talking about our favorites from Fate Reforged. We've had Prereleases, FNMs, Game Day- basically, plenty of time to affirm and destroy any opinions we may or may not have had when did the reviews a few weeks ago.

This week, it's just your core TGZ staff sharing picks, but that's not gonna stop us.

THIS IS THE STACK!

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
What I love about this card is that it is instantly premium removal for us. I was shocked to see something so strong, particularly with such an aggressively costed 1U.

What I don't like about this card is that it feels colorshifted, and definitely not as color intensive. It's just hard for me to see Mastery of the Unseen and feel like this card shouldn't cost WW, GU, or some combination of these colors. It's just so much stronger than Rapid Hybridization and Pongify, which I already play.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
UL took mine. This card is insane. Even in the most Creature heavy decks, you are overwhelmingly likely to flip a noncreature. Most decks are nearly half lands. You can probably expect there to be ramp spells, artifacts, removal, counters, etc. to be at least 25% of their total deck. 25 Creatures is a lot in a Commander deck. In that case, many of them will be mana dorks. All in all, I estimate (roughly) that this will be excellent 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time, instead of being excellent, it will be interesting.

Tom- THUMBS UP
If you're running heavy Blue, there's no good reason not to run Pongify, Rapid Hybridization and Curse of the Swine. Mono-Blue spot removal is scarce - with good reason - but when it does appear it's always a shoe-in for Island-based EDH decks. Now we can add Reality Shift to the list of must-haves.

As GG says, most of the time the Manifested card is going to be less useful than what's being exiled, and even then running something like Lens of Clarity (probably a good idea now that there are going to be more face-down cards in the format) is going to clue you in as to whether the Manifest dude will be a problem later.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
I have already gone on two rants about this card and how wildly entertaining it is, so I will spare you, but I am interested in hearing other people's opinions on the card.

Bonus audience participation challenge: In the comments, explain how to consistently turn this into card advantage.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
In a bizarre stroke of irony, this is the card I anticipated that GG would want, so I made other picks. Apparently one of those was Reality Shift, which Gramps wanted.

What I like about this card is that I don't actually care about "consistent" card advantage. Most likely, I am going to abuse it once and blow it up. Tormenting Voice is a card I already play in red decks. This is just extra icing on the cake.

Tom- THUMBS UP
Love it. Absolutely love it. It's a very flavourful Red effect. As Uncle Landdrops points out, it's not the usual Blue standard of repeatable tap-and-draw like Arcanis the Omnipotent. It's a one-and-done source of pure draw that fits very nicely with the Red theme of giving up something to get cards. It found an immediate home in most of my decks running Red, and the few times I've drawn it thus far have given me no cause to regret doing so.


UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
Really like this card. Working on a super-budget, common/uncommon Uril deck, and this fortifies card draw while also giving me the pumps. I don't have a whole lot of cards that are just pump effects, but if I've gotta have an exception, this is a nice one. Acting as both a Harmonize and a way to go lethal in conjunction with all the cheap little Auras that have static effects, Sage's Reverie will be a nice addition to Uril, and the better Aura-Voltron decks in the format.

Grandpa Growth-  THUMBS UP
This is an easy shoe-in to Bruna decks, of which I have one. I liked flight of fancy in that deck quite a bit because you need a way to draw cards that plays well on theme. Sure you could cast Divination, but the ability to recur it with Bruna and Hanna, Ship's Navigator is important.

In that deck, this draws WAY more cards and has the added bonus of making your Creature into a legitimate threat.

Tom- THUMBS UP
Solid pick for Voltron builds, equally good for Aura-focused Enchantress builds, and, probably not a common opinion, but it's something I've been wanting to try out for a while: pretty damn good in an Heroic deck. Getting Anax & Cymede's pump effect and a few new cards in hand is value. Cheap White card draw with the potential to grab a whole new grip makes this card a serious contender for a few fun builds. The only downside I see is that it can't be run in any of these newfangled Tiny Leaders decks I'm hearing so much about.


TOM

Tom- THUMBS UP

Krenko has a new best friend! As does anyone else running Red aggro/weenies variants. Myself, I like it for a Prossh deck; throw the hungry dragon and his horde of kobolds at someone, play Dragonrage, then sac the Kobolds to Prossh and spend all the mana using his new mana sink to make him a bigger threat than ever.

What really makes this card shine is the flexibility - there's no overly-narrow specification that the mana generated must be spent on pumping your attackers, so you're free to drop this when Krenko's goblin horde is charging at one opponent and then use a supercharged Comet Storm or similar to blast a second unsuspecting foe out of the game. Boom goes the dynamite.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS DOWN

This card is very interesting, but I haven't seen any truly broken applications for it. This mostly just acts as a Red alternative to Overrun effects. The number one problem is that Creatures don't get Trample, so you really have to assemble an impressive board to make this worth casting. I can't advise using this strategy in a format where there are 50+ legal Wrath effects.

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS DOWN
Magic may have invented a nice new compound word, but the card's mechanics are nerfed quite a bit, which feels reminiscent of a bygone Dragon Rage from a bygone Gyarados (For whatever reason, this attack in Pokemon only did 40 damage). Back to our card, I honestly don't see why it couldn't be RR for each creature. That still seems fair, considering that the attacking clause requires your creatures to be in combat, severely limiting time and place that this can be used anyway, and Trumpet Blast is literally 2R, "Creatures you control get +2/+0 until EOT." While not the same thing, short of having another few handy red Instants, I don't see this mana doing much but Firebreathing.

I'd also like to point out that of the 50+ Wrath effects, only a handful can be used or activated on an opponent's step without Quicken or a Vedalken Orrery, but there are many spot removal spells that hose this card. Still, if it does what it's supposed to do, this is an Overrun effect that navigates combat in a more compelling way. By being an Instant-speed trick of its own, the possibility to force trades exists, and that seems cool. My Thumbs still point down, but I'm sure I'll see an opponent beat my face with it, making it a little more optimistic.

That's all we got for this week, but it doesn't mean we don't want to hear from you! Feel free to share with us your favorite Fate Reforged tech for our favorite 40-life format in the comments below!

Pass.

-The TGZ Staff

Cast Stuff

Happy Thor's Day!

I don't have any innate TGZ stuff today. I've been a little slammed this week.

However, I do have stuff for you. In tandem with last week's talk about ObzeDIZZLE, there's a nice strategy overview on Life Gain decks that I wrote for CommanderCast. Here's the link for that:

CommanderCast article- Getting a Life

Additionally, I got a chance to talk Abzan with the guys on this week's podcast. Here's that in case you haven't listened to it:

CommanderCast Episode #187- Card Abzantage

Pass.

-UL

In General: MTG Economics Part 1: The Primary Price

Hello and welcome back to In General. On Sunday's here at TGZ we talk about anything and everything related to Magic the Gathering. Today, I am beginning a four-part opinion/educational piece on the economics of MtG, starting with everyone's favorite scapegoat: MtGO.

You can ask anyone in town, they will all have a few complaints about Magic Online. Specifically, I am going to pick out something that has been bothering me since the very beginning of online play: the cost structure.

Market Control

If you want to purchase a physical MtG sealed product, they are pretty expensive. There are certainly costs to creating and producing the game, but those are relatively small. Primarily, what drives up the cost of Magic cards is demand. While Wizards works to make the game appealing and grow the player base, the demand for cards is largely outside of the company's control. Some sets sell better than other. The reason for this is the strength of the product and people's interest in it.

Things are a little bit different when it comes to Magic Online. The costs of maintaining the program and providing support, etc., are still definitely there, so it could never be free, but there is no scarcity. A mint condition Black Lotus is expensive because only a handful still exist and thousands of people want one. Black Lotus is expensive on MTGO because Wizards has decided it will be that way.

By restricting the supply of new electronic cards 'produced' they keep the price of electronic boosters and other sealed product high, which they can then continue to sell for 99% PROFIT.

I fully endorse Wizard's right to run a profitable business and make money by entertaining people. That is their right as a corporation. But make no mistake, there is no real correlation between the price of an electronic booster pack and a physical one.

They don't require the same materials, don't trade in the same market, and don't suffer the same economic constraints, so why are they the same price? Actually, electronic boosters are usually more expensive from the Wizards online store than they are in real life. Tying these prices together is a convenient way for consumers to visualize and accept the costs, but in actuality this represents a clever price fixing scheme by Wizards.

Consumer Protection

When you provide a product to consumers, you should be required to disclose the extent to which you a Market Maker in that particular product and what your Compensation, if any, is for facilitating that transaction.

A market maker is any entity that has a way to control the supply, and thus the price, of a product. If you are a dealer with an inventory position, you are a market maker, provided you have at least a small percentage of the market under your control.

Compensation is pretty straightforward. I am not saying that every dealer needs to provide a full income statement and balance sheet with every candy bar they sell, but interested consumers should be given the opportunity to scrutinize such information at their request, if only in the interest of consumer protection.

Savvy readers may have picked up the language and rules that I am referencing. This is securities law. In the United States, nationally traded securities are regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission, which utilizes these rules for enforcing proper disclosure of material facts to consumers BEFORE THEY BUY.

Servicing vs. Profiteering

I am an adamant supporter of consumer protection. Not necessarily consumer protection LAWS, which are often politically motivated and have only modest effectiveness, but rather responsible business practices.

If a man was dying of thirst in the desert you would give him some water, right? Well, if you always did it for free, soon you would be out of water yourself because people would take advantage of your kindness, so you need to regulate the price somehow. You also don't want to charge extortionate prices because that will turn people away from you, shrink your market share, and most importantly: it won't serve your customer's needs.

I am arguing that, by pegging the price of online boosters to physical boosters AND artificially restricting the supply by only presenting limited public offerings, Wizards is behaving in an anti-consumer way. They are charging a fixed, theoretical maximum for a product which has a negligible marginal cost to produce. They hold a monopoly position, which is unavoidable because they created the game themselves and it is their intellectual property, but for those who are not inclined to an in-depth economic analysis, suffice to say that this situation usually ends poorly for the consumer.

Charging the highest prices that you can while optimizing sales is a typical indicator of a profiteering business model. A servicing business model is one in which you voluntarily charge lower prices to build up loyalty, trust, and social equity with your customers.

At the beginning I promised that this would be an opinion piece, so in case you don't think that you have gotten your money's worth, here is my final opinion on this subject: Companies, particularly someone like a toy manufacturer who brings so much joy into the world, should use a servicing model for pricing their products, NOT a profiteering model.

Join me next week Zoners, when I discuss why Magic isn't a great investment. Oh joy!

-GG

The Stack #57- Stack-zarus, Come Forth!

Breaking Bad. That was a Breaking Bad reference.

So in case you're not familiar with the recurring trope that is used in Comedy Central's longest running raunchy cartoon,  people happen to come back from the dead a lot. Frankly, the rate of resurrected characters has been astounding across the many programs I follow.

Whether it is because I'm in the resurrecting or reanimating spirit, or just because the truth of the matter is that TGZ's best co-collaborative segment never really did die- it just went and hid out in New Hampshire for several months under a different identity so as to gain perspective- we're back. By we, I mean, The Stack, and there's soon to be a whole host of new guests getting featured.

To honor this momentous occasion, the re-launching features twice the theme- our favorite cards with Flashback, and our favorite cards to Reanimate.

So yeah, we're playing it again, cause The Stack is great, and it never gets old.

Time to throw it in reverse for thirst!
THIS IS THE STACK!

TOM

Tom- THUMBS UP
OK, yeah, I know. Technically, not so much a target for reanimation as it raises itself. Still, that raid trigger is kinda like a Creature-based version of Flashback, so I'm throwing caution to the winds and including the card anyways.

For a deck that runs off death triggers and reanimation, Bloodsoaked Champion is...well, a champion. He's an ideal early turn play to couple with your Skullclamp for immediate card advantage. He's super easy to recur and he gets around the pesky non-token specification for cards like Grim Haruspex and Harvester of Souls. Best of all he can be reanimated repeatedly per turn for so long as you have mana and a sac outlet, making him practically a boardwipe when combined with Grave Pact, Ashnod's Altar and a handful of Swamps.

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
Mad props to BS Champ. I've literally pulled my playset of this card from Sealed and Draft, where it's probably even better than it is in Commander: eating Morph dudes for breakfast and being personally responsible for the best Aggro decks in both environments. If it wasn't for Sagu Mauler, I'd say it was the best Creature in those environments.

The big flavor question me and the rest of Reddit want to know though- How does he not block if he's holding two shields?

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
The card is pretty great, but I have to admit, I hate it. Wizards has printed more quality Skullclamp enablers than they have quality exiling removal to deal with those enablers. There are a dozen or more Creatures that look nearly identical to this, which all scare the crap out of me. BSC isn't even the top contender in this category, but it is still enough to get my attention. The added benefit of having a bunch of these cards in your deck is that your opponent often starts losing life very early on AND they can't expect to weasel out of harm's way using a Wrath effect. Just adding card advantage to any Creature makes them into the perfect threat.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
This is the most common Flashback card I play in my decks. Along side Merfolk Looter, this becomes a serious amount of card draw, even when all I'm doing is flashing it back.

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
This is a super high-impact common, which I love. It is a great way to generate a ton of card advantage throughout the game. It presses your opponent to have multiple counterspells. Is it a little expensive? Sure, but this isn't really an early game type of card. This is the kind of thing you are either sandbagging or celebrating when you draw it late.

Tom - THUMBS UP
Overcosted, Sorcery-speed card draw is pretty meh. On the flipside, anything that allows for "target player" to draw cards wins out over straight self-draw for the added flexibility; Nekusar and a few other decks want that, and even in non-janky non-combo decks giving free cards to beleagured players can be an interesting political tool.

I like the Flashback cost as well. Anything that asks such a small life cost is much better in EDH than elsewhere and two mana + three life for two cards = solid.

GRANDPA GROWTH

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
If you know me, and you know what this card does, then there is no more explanation necessary. This was a close pick for me though, there are probably half a dozen cards that I could very easily claim are my 'favesies'. Army of the Damned, Creeping Rennaissance, Cackling Counterpart, Fervent Denial.

I just want to point out that Landdrops and I both picked commons for this topic. Go Pauper. Whoo!

Uncle Landdrops- THUMBS UP
Pauper cards are really helpful in making not just deck designs, but also, Commander, much more exciting.

I love Mystical Teachings, and I often find that I make sketchy U/B decks just so that I can play some of my favorites with these specific color identities. Teachings is definitely there.

That Black in the color identity is what I think makes it both very strong and very scarce in terms what decks this card can go in, relative to our format. I'm not playing Tutors-on-Tutors so much anymore, but this one that I've definitely built several different packages around.

Tom- THUMBS DOWN
A personal preference, but I don't really like to tutor. Granted, it's understood that sometimes you just need a very specific card, but when building decks I err towards redundancy so that there are several cards which can fill any role required. Being able to search the library for answers is undeniably useful, but also - for my money - leads to repetitive games as the "best" answers are usually tutored up or used to win a game out of nowhere. It's funny and cool the first time, but after several games end the same way it grows stale. Not to mention the endless searching/shuffling drawing out the pace of a game can be exceptionally annoying to other players. Putting Flashback on a tutor card is guaranteed to have me grinding my teeth.

UNCLE LANDDROPS

Grandpa Growth- THUMBS UP
This card dominated Standard, shines in Commander, and should be in every Cube out there. The card is just completely bananas at all points in the game. It resists/pairs well with some of the best cards in the format: Removal? Psssh. Show and Tell? What a joke! Upheaval? Deal.

On a related note: I just watched Firefly last year. It wasn't that good. Things I don't like: Nathan Fillion, Joss Whedon, Science Fiction.

Tom- THUMBS UP
I had thoughts to put here, but got all distracted by GG's closing statement. Blasphemy. May the Angel of Serenity smite you.

The best thing about the card is the flexibility. It can be a recursion engine for your graveyard, a multi-target Oblivion Ring for your foes or a bouncing engine for your own ETB creatures. Sweet value in every instance. I run the Angel in my Roon copy/blink deck, and under the right circumstances - like when paired with a Progenitor Mimic or a kicked Rite of Replication - she can spirit away entire armies of opponents' beasties.

Uncle Landdrops-  THUMBS UP
Well, I have no clue what the hell Grandpa is thinking. Firefly Rulz. Hopefully there are enough Browncoats and Jayne's Hats that enjoy what's going on here. This is my altered version (credit to the unknown Deviant Artist for this) for the Angel of Infinite Card Advantage and Beatdowns, but I believe everyone will recognize Return to Ravnica's premier reanimate target.

I play this in Saffi, and I can't tell you how design predicated on Reanimate-Reinforcement makes this so filthy. Sac outlets and trigger stacking make her one of the strongest synergies I have in a deck where there are plenty of synergies that actually end the game outright as opposed to denying resources. She's still one of the best cards in the deck and has saved my skin more than a few times, making her not just an Angel based on card type alone.

Alright, well that wraps 'er all up. Be sure to holla in the comments below if you have a card to contribute, you have a topic you'd like us to tackle, or you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of The Stack!

Until next time, be sure not to let this Wookie win.

Pass.
-UL/GG/Tom

Better Deckbuilding: Obzedat, Ghost Council

Happy Thor's Day Zoners, and welcome back to Better Deckbuilding!

I'm pretty excited to share my deck based around the Ghost-iest Gangstas of Gatecrash- the Obzedizzle!

While some might say it's not that difficult to build a Commander deck, that doesn't mean it's good. I spent a lot of long hours building several different iterations of Orzhov, finding them to be clunky, somewhat boring iterations of GoodStuff decks that never resonated nor represented the kinds of decks I wanted to play.

Although I only made the Resolution last year to find versions of Boros and Orzhov I could be happy with, you could say that this has been moving a lot longer than that.

So I'd like to dedicate this special episode of Better Deckbuilding to others who may be on the strugglebus, still looking for that Legendary Creature to get excited about, or that one special little space in design that you've always seen, but never found before. Although playing and winning with these decks is awesome, nothing gets me more jazzed than finding the surprise. And building around Obzedizzle was surely that!

WHY OBZEDIZZLE?

Back when I reviewed Gatecrash, I was pretty salty about the flavor of this card. My biggest criticisms being 1) Generally, that the creatures on cards updated from our last visit felt a little "too easy" to design and 2) Specifically, that gaining Haste felt like a forced flavor foul, made so that it would see play in Standard (which, it did.)

None of this is to say I didn't think the card was good- just a little unimpressive in terms of design. It stunk that I couldn't get excited about a new potential Commander in colors I wanted to play. I mean, I love Haste just as much as the next person. I even get the argument for being the "Black" part of the ability, and that the combined effect is a "Chinese Take-Out Style" (This is what Mark Rosewater calls it when they combine effects of two different colors. See also Recoil) print on the card.

So it took me some time to get over myself in order to take him for a test drive. Fortunately, some other things I didn't realize were compelling me towards Obzedat, as well as a good headspace for deck design.

The first factor was a metagame choice to bring back the Wrath. Over the last couple years, my metagame has experienced some serious shifts. We've had too many Wraths and not enough spot removal. We've had not enough removal, and too much Battlecruiser Magic. Now we have a ton of spot removal, and not enough ways to clear the board.

Because a healthy metagame really wants to have the same qualities that pitchers and hitters do in baseball, where they're constantly making adjustments to psych the other one out. I liked the idea of playing a Wrath deck, but with a little bit of a twist.

The twist, naturally, involves playing around our General. With the additions of some powerful, faster mass removal effects, a combination of old stand-by's and ones that I wanted to try out, I came up with a really nice control-based Orzhov deck that I've had a lot of success with.

THE STRATEGY

Basically, it's a Wrath-Based Control Deck. We are fortified with answers, so that we can play most of the early game with spot removal for serious threats while building up a big enough mana base to get Obzedat out and doing its thing.

While there are a lot of Obzedat lists out there doing some serious Extort and dedicated Life Gain strategy and Combo, this deck is avoiding these intentions. There are a few cards in the deck that help create engines based on the Obzedat's Syphon Life trigger, but the deck's not specifically designed to rely on these effects, making them ironically, as you'll see, a little bit more potent.

THE TECH

There are quite a few popular cards that see a significant power boost in this brew- Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, and Magus of the Disk.

I've attempted to make the Wrath-proof battle deck several times with no success. Tajic and Zurgo have been the Commanders, and they weren't successful.

What's better about this deck is the timing flexibility and its conjunction with Obzedat's ability. With Tajic, the problem was that being only a 2/2, he needed stuff he could pick up and swing with. Not wanting to lose the equipment, these cards were avoided in favor of cheaper, Sorcery-speed Wraths, which made the deck hard to play, with too many cards and not enough mana to play them all in a single turn.

With Obzedat, we get to, much more literally, get people to "play into our Wraths." We have a solid creature needing no equipment, and, with no creature on the battlefield, we can actually lure players into attacking us, protecting the Obzedat from our own stuff while also eliminating cards from our opponent's hands and board.

Because I don't get to play this color combination enough, you can almost always guarantee that I will be rocking this card, and mentioning it as a piece of tech.

I understand that this innately makes it almost the opposite of tech, but it is my favorite Fog effect, because I get to say,  "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh Batwing!"

Fun story- I have actually won multiple games with this card, so even if it it isn't tech anymore, I can't explain how it continues to win me games.

Anyway, back to Wrath tech. I think people are very reluctant to commit to such an expensive card, but it's a good one.

Frankly, it's not on my list of favorite Wraths, but it shines here, where I already play Rout and Angel of the Dire Hour. Seven sits at a good spot in our curve, where we're cleaning up the big 6-drops, clearing way for the Ghosts to get in for damage.

One of the cool tricks with this card is the ability to respond on our own turn, before Obzedizzle returns, or on our end step, when we exile him.

The latter, tapping out on our end step, may sound inefficient, but it's actually fine. Letting our opponents untap is sometimes too much time, and we all need a good scry every now and again.

Before we get back to our cool removal, let's talk about some of the creatures I'm playing.

Stinkweed Imp, as I've found out across the Interwebz, is becoming a relatively popular include for Karador decks, and that makes me happy.

I think this is a card that Gramps brought up when talking about Pauper a while back, and I decided that I should just play this card in normal EDH and see what happens.

What happens is you get an incredible creature with a lot of re-tread value. Having a huge Dredge cost attached to a huge Rattlesnake effect makes this an effective card for decks that don't play a lot of creatures, and don't want to tap out so much while also having at least some permanents permanently on the board (Obzedizzle tends to come and go, remember).

Long story short, I will be trying to slide more copies of this card into more decks. And I will be looking for a foil one too. Cause this is the kind of card I like to get in foil. Janky weird stuff.

My copy of Retaliate had an unsuccessful run in my Darien, King of Kjeldor deck, where it was silly for anyone to want to attack when Darien was out, and chances were, I probably didn't have enough mana to support it.

Doing my binder check after my first run with the deck, I had Executioner's Swing sitting out, and realized this would be a much bigger improvement. With Obzedat gaining a steady amount of life, I don't mind giving my opponents the opportunity to think they've done something meaningful if I can get rid of their board as a result.

Sometimes, cards we think are bad don't turn out to be so horrible. I've already used this a couple times, taking like 15-20 damage, and completely obliterating my opponent's board because they chose to attack.

So we'll run back the other Fated card in Obzedizzle's colors.

Fated Return has been an incredible addition to both of the decks I've played it in so far.

My first was in the Doran Defender deck, where I cast Fated Return to Reanimate an opponent's Sun Titan and ensure I had my Rolling Stones out for my nonsense Walls.

A few weeks ago, I cast Fated Return on my opponent's Pontiff of Blight and took Obzedat into Extorts-ville. It was the coolest.

And by coolest, I mean, I won the game by casting Solemn Simulacrum with multiple Extort triggers. So I've done that.

Last card I'll talk about is a piece of old school CommanderCast tech- Seht's Tiger.

This card is seriously, seriously bonkers. I don't usually tell you to get up IMMEDIATELY and go buy a card, but if I did, it'd be this one.

I've been listening to a lot of Mark Rosewater's Drive To Work podcast, and one of the elements he's mentioned that he likes to do in design is create cards that players have to discover their possibilities.

Seht's Tiger is definitely one of these. Because at face value, this doesn't look like a way to both counter Fact or Fiction and Fog your opponent. But it's both. And it's a creature. Also, I love Flash. This card is all the things I love, which is why it was on one of our first episodes of The Stack, and it's back again (and so too, will be The Stack).

Here's the list in its entirety, so's you can check out the rest of it. Obzedizzle

Remember to come back by on Saturday for the triumphant return of The Stack!

Pass.
-UL

Ban This Sick Filth! - Prophet of Kruphix

Hello Zoners, and welcome to my humble column. I'm Tom, I'm new around here, and in this regular feature (hereby abbreviated to BTSF because seriously, who's got the time to keep typing that out?) I'm going to be looking at some of the Commander community's least favourite cards and asking whether they are truly as banworthy as they're purported to be. We're getting the party started with the oft-maligned Prophet of Kruphix, but first, let's recap the banlist criteria put forth by the rules committee, under whose guidelines a card can be banned if it;

Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations.

Warps the Format Strategically.

Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly.

Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander.

Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry.

So, given that the PoK is one of the two cards I see most ban requests for (to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the second is Deadeye Navigator), how many of those criteria can we apply to the card?

 Wacky waving inflatable arm tube woman!

Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations

This one's pretty much a given. As anyone who has seen one played can attest, the Prophet has an instant warping effect on the game. It rapidly devolves into a race to copy, steal or murder the Prophet and either gain her enormous advantages or prevent other players from untapping with her on the board. I've seen players use the their carefully hoarded board wipes just to be rid of this one card, and if that isn't indicative of an "undesirable game situation" then I don't know what is. When an entire game of Magic is derailed by a single card every time it sees play, that's an issue.

Warps the Format Strategically

Commander is a pretty difficult format to warp thanks to the rules regarding colour identity. PoK's two-colour nature makes it difficult to sleeve it up into the huge number of decks that, say, Primeval Titan found its way into. While there are no shortage of generals who can gleefully become downright abusive with Prophet in the deck, ex: Animar, Momir Vig, Prime Speaker Zegana - it's still situational enough that I can't honestly say it's warping the format. Individual games in which it sees play, absolutely, but it isn't impacting the format as a whole by it's very existence.

Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly

Ha! Yeah, let's just go ahead and put a big ol' tick in that box. Untap all your lands on every other player's untap step? In terms of mana generation the Prophet pushes you far, far ahead of the table as well as being in the right colours for actual ramping and counterspells to keep other players behind.

Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander

This one's debatable. It's more akin to interacting badly with the structure of Magic itself rather than the format-specific rules. PoK makes the turn structure largely meaningless if the controlling player can actually protect it for a few turns, as the incredible increase to mana generation and the ability to drop creatures with Flash means that every turn is also your turn.

Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry

We shall safely ignore this one, given that it's from a set so recent that some stores are still carrying Theros boosters, and that SCG lists the price at under two dollars with 27 currently in stock. Black Lotus it ain't.

So, how does it stack up? Is the Prophet deserving of all the ire? Is a ban impending?

"I say thee NAY!"

On balance, despite the obvious problems shown above, I find myself leaning towards keeping Prophet around. One key factor in this is that well-worn maxim that it "dies to removal", and in fact is almost guaranteed to do so. While the warping effect it has on a game is undeniable, it's also quite easy to dispose of. It isn't a key piece of any super-janky combo that I can think of, it just enables other combos to be put into place faster. Is it annoying to have a resolved Prophet on the table with no answers in hand? Sure as hell is. Is it irreparably busted? Not so much. If you can play it, resolve it, and protect then unless your deck is very, very bad you're probably going to win the game on the strength of your mana flow alon. However, the same can be said for a few other cards as well, and I don't see anyone calling for an immediate Crypt Ghast ban.

I appreciate that the RC haven't taken steps to ban Prophet. It may be incredibly powerful and extremely annoying, but it absolutely isn't format breaking, and I'm glad we don't have a format where cards earn a ban simply because players don't want to have to deal with them.

Until next time gang, remember to keep a Doom Blade in reserve!

Pass the turn.

SURPRISE MONDAY ANNOUNCEMENT!

Hola Zoners! I'm making a splash early in the week to give you some time to get excited about the new changes I've been talking about.

The first order of business is the debut of one of our new writers- Tom. Tom has been writing for a variety of other sites about Commander, and we're really excited about some of his upcoming columns here on TGZ. His first column, "Ban This Sick Filth!" will feature tomorrow as he steps on and off the ol' soapbox to examine emotionally and more objectively the "ban-worthyness" of Commander's most contested cards.

He doesn't have a nickname (We don't all need them, do we?), and he isn't Captain Falcon (as far as I know), but his first piece comes out swinging, so be sure to come back by for that tomorrow.

Yeah, this is a big heap of pancakes- but do you know what it means? THE STACK IS BACK!

This Saturday will be the return of TGZ's prodigal series, The Stack, chock full of all the flavor-silly, underrated, and crazy broken pieces of tech me, Gramps, Tom, and our list of special guests can find to talk about. 

Sandwiched in between the New-ness, Better Deckbuilding will return with my no-nonsense, slow-rolling Black-White Control deck run by a group of familiar Ravnican ghosts who've rotated out of Standard, and are ready to go to work in our durdly little format.

That's all the surprises I have for now, but stay tuned- we've got more stuff to look forward to as we sail into 2015. Don't miss it!

Pass.
-UL

In General: Manifest Destiny

Hello and welcome back to In General. Every Sunday here on The General Zone, I get to talk about anything and everything relating to Magic the Gathering. This week we are taking an in-depth look at the new Manifest mechanic and what it means for both designers and players. By now everyone has had a chance to read our set review articles and play with the cards a bit, so I want to discuss the limited environment of Fate Reforged.

The Morph Format

For those of you who played Time Spiral limited, you know that Morph can be tough to play against. Also, you have no idea how easy you had it. Does anybody out there remember Onslaught block?! Jeez.

When Morph first debuted we had no standard by which to evaluate it. At first we didn't know all the morphs, and there were quite a few whammies that you needed to watch out for. Have you ever run into a Zombie Cutthroat and then felt really bad about yourself? This card was in Cubes for a long time because it it was so hard to play around....but we learned, didn't we?

The level of Instant-speed interaction in the average game of Magic has gone up significantly over the years. On board tricks use to be less common and easier to play around...until Morph happened. You used to be able to pick up a card and read it to find out what it did. Morph FORCED you to remember every detail of every Creature that it was printed on. That lead to many frustrated new players who couldn't compete with players who were more acquainted with the format.

Morphs in Khans of Tarkir

It is much easier to predict what your opponent's Morphs are in Khans than it was in Time Spiral. The penalty for guessing wrong is still high, but most people are playing rigidly defined color combinations, which helps you narrow down the possibilities.

This restriction makes designing Morph cards much simpler. This gave the designers a little more freedom to experiment with different types of Creatures. There are Morphs that you can flip up for no mana, but if you examine them more closely you will find that they aren't likely to just eat an attacking Creature. At best, they will trade. This helps reduce the mental tax on players. You don't need to be able to determine precisely what their face down Creature is... as long as it won't affect the board much if it were turned face up.

Imagine this hypothetical Morph card:

This illustrates my point perfectly. When it is face down, you are still unsure what to do about it because you don't know what it is, but when it is turned face up...nothing changes. Any play you made by just assuming it was a colorless 2/2 is still valid because it IS, IN FACT, a colorless 2/2 when turned up.

Morphs in Fate Reforged

In Khans limited, the Morph varied greatly in size, shape, and color. You could be running into a woolly mammoth for crying out loud.

By contrast, In Fate Reforged literally anything could be hiding under that Morph bug...right? Well no. If you take a look through the cards in the set, the majority can't ever be flipped up at all, so they are just always the 2/2, but let's focus specifically on the Creatures.

Scrolling through Gatherer you will find that most of the Creatures in the set will trade for a 2/2. That didn't happen by mistake. We have a 4/1, 3/2's, a 4/2, several 2/1's, a 5/2 Defender...coincidence? Nope.

What does it all mean Basil?

From a design standpoint, Morph is complex and rewards more knowledgeable players. Manifest, raises that bar even higher, perhaps too high for normal humans to consistently achieve. Manifest has the effect of increasing variance within the game because it is so difficult to manage all of the necessary information. Sometimes a less skilled player will defeat a more skilled player by flipping a big Manifest threat. This empowers newer players to stay in games that they would otherwise lose.

The bottom line for me is that playing against a Manifested card is always going to be complex and stressful, which I love, but is also just plain fun. You are never really going to know what is under there. You can play the numbers, play a guessing game, or you can just play like you have nothing to lose.

That is a feeling that I haven't gotten from Magic in a long time.

-GG

Remember The Fallen #2- The Re-Reboot

Welcome back to another Thor's Day, Zoners!

So, 2015 is going to be a pretty exciting year for TGZ. We've got some fresh new writers pumping out content, Stack episodes everywhere waiting to get booted up, and several other old/new ideas that the gang and I are going to re-start. I can't wait to share it all with ya!

The first of which is a one-off series I started last year and never continued- Remember the Fallen. Kudos to you if you remember, Remember the Fallen- but if not, I'm going to tell you anyway.

(If you want, here's the first one: Remember the Fallen #1)

FACT: Some decks are going to sound awesome. Like the Xenagos Ball Lightning deck I featured in my first installment of Remember the Fallen.

FACT: Not all decks are going to be good. 

More importantly, not all decks are going to be ones that we like, let alone ones that we keep.

This is what Remember the Fallen is all about. Often, I use Better Deckbuilding as my own little primer for deck designs I like and make so that they may inspire you to take some of my tech and try your own little spin on it. 

However, because I'm a constant deckbuilder, and again, I can't like every design I make, there are some real bad ones that often get dismantled or abandoned quickly throughout my deckbuilding process. And because I believe it is important to show that I am not a machine that gets it right every time, we're going to make time and place so I can show you all the deck designs that didn't quite make it- which might inspire a few of you to share your lists and show me a thing or two. 

So let's get started (again!)

Prime Speaker Zegana, aka PSZ, is a card that I've openly admitted I was entirely wrong to be disappointed with when she got spoiled back in Gatecrash. Everything about this card is right, I don't know what I was thinking, mea culpa like twenty-thousand times to William Murai for the brilliant art, as well as Design and Development for a fully functioning Simic Alternative.

And because it is well known that my love for Simic is moderately infinite, I did take her for a test drive last Fall.

The design was difficult- I didn't want to make the Control/Hexproof Dinosaurs deck, or this neat little Loam/Land Play deck that looked really solid.

I settled on a Wizard-Tribal/Combo deck, which ended up being not bad. Unlike some of my designs that don't make it past the Goldfish rounds, the 1v1 and multiplayer test drives did yield some victories.

Door of Destinies in conjunction with Master Biomancer set up Fathom Mage to always Evolve, as well as create some hilariously big Thought Couriers.

My big combos in the deck involved Biovisionary or Lab Maniac, so I was either drawing into a Rite of Replication or drawing everything. Oh, yeah- and I got to play Prophet of Kruphix. #HagridToldHimHeWasAWizard

Ultimately, the counterspells made the deck durdle, and the combos went stale quickly, mostly because the set up was very similar to Azami. There was just too many big-time, one-trick things in this deck to keep my interest in it long term, so I pulled off a Lab Maniac combo, a Biovisionary combo, and retired it.

So another year, another Boros deck dismantled. That seems to be a common thing for me as I continue to search for the right one for me in Red and White.

I'll admit the reason Anax and Cymede failed was a lot on me in deck design.

The concept seemed cool- Auras combined with Trick Voltron to make for a little Aggro deck with opportunities for multiple Heroic triggers. I'd done some serious Gatherer searching for Auras like Flickering Ward and Ghitu Firebreathing, which could be bounced and re-cast for Heroic value. Coupled with a few nice Storm spells like Astral Steel, I thought this was going to make for a nice deck.

What went wrong was two things. The first was that I forgot that mana was required, not only to bounce the enchantment, but to also re-cast it. Not compensating for this, the deck had a heck of a time repeating and resetting the effects of the Auras as many times as I wanted.

The other thing I got wrong, which was dumb, was a rules oversight with regards to Storm. Any copies I got off of Storm weren't going to trigger Heroic because, guess what? WE DON'T ACTUALLY CAST THE COPIES OFF OF STORM!

Those were probably the two biggest blunders I made in design, but there were actually two additional issues that broke the camel's back, leading to deck demolition.

The third problem was that we were swimming in options. What I mean is that I really threw every Heroic card I could play into the deck so I could figure out what, if any, were going to work. Like, do I always target A & C to get pumps and trample? Do I target this Vanguard of Brimaz to get Cat Tokens?

Having so many different options may sound good, but design-wise, none of these cards were big enough to get around creatures, so we were always making a sacrifice, and that's without trying to account for removal.

The last issue was just one I've had with all Boros decks I've made since the beginning of time- I never seem to have enough cards in my hand. While I like to think that I've become a better Aggro player, I'm still a calculating one. I take chances when I can, play tricks to protect my stuff, and most of my designs can support the tempo I want to play at.

Because of the innate need for R/W to get wide, I feel like I'm constantly over-committing to the board state, putting myself on a clock that's going to run out faster than I want. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong, and I've got to fix it- until then, the search continues!

I talked about Mirko a little bit in my strategy column over on CommanderCast, but I thought I'd get a little bit more in-depth about what was going on.

I'm still on the lookout for my Mill Commander. I'm also on the lookout for having a deck that's fun, that can win, but that I'm just as comfortable losing with. I'm also looking to have a successful Dimir deck at some point.

So against my better judgment, I threw together a scraggly-little Mill deck so I wouldn't be so behind while Mesmeric Orb was trending on Twitter (NOTE: I don't know if that's true. I actually don't Twitter). Fact though- Sidisi has made this Mesmeric Orb a pretty known quantity.

At first, I thought I might have some hope. Mirko, being just the right amount of unplayable, could come in under the radar and take away/potentially give my opponents a bunch of cards.

Ultimately, the deck got taken apart because it was just too slow. No joke- I did at least 18 damage with Mirko by the time I had an opponent's library in the Shelldock Isle zone (That's 20 cards or less, in case you've forgotten your Hideaway lands), and I just thought, "That's too much for not enough." The deck was working, and I could've probably made it better, but I just didn't want to spend any more time goofing off.

Well, that's all I have for now. Before I go, here's a link to the Milling article published yesterday over on the Big Brothership, CommanderCast:

Mill-osophy

Also- Here's a link to my first podcast, in which I got to guest interview one of the creators of Tiny Leaders, Steven Hamonic.

CommanderCast #185- Tiny Leaders (and I'm on it!)

As always, my failures hopefully lead to your gain. If you've got decklists featuring any of these Fallen heroes, or you've seen some in action, and they have a nice online list for us to look at, share them with us!

Thanks! Turn's To You.

-UL