Gifts Ungiven

Day one of Pro Tour Honolulu 2009 is done. The two undefeated players?

Brian Kibler and Zac Hill.

I seriously want to see that pairing in the finals. :)

Luis is on a 6-2 record at the end of the day, miring him amongst a mass of 18-pointers. Hopefully he'll pull clear tomorrow to get into yet another top eight.

I was away at a wedding this weekend, but I'm glad to see that my picks from day one did, indeed, make it to the top eight. Congratulations to both Brian Kibler and Zac Hill for making it there. Also, big congrats to Kazuya Mitamura for winning on this third run at a top eight.

The full coverage is, of course, available here.

The list of Alara block decks going 6-4 or better has been posted. Although it's not an upcoming format for me, it's still interesting -- and, of course, block decks can point toward Standard decks one might not have thought of, especially when blocks rotate.

I was hoping the day two Wargate Control deck would make the list, but apparently not.

Forsythe and Gottlieb have announced a palette of new rules changes coming in with M2010. Here they are as one-liners, followed by my quick review.

Simultaneous Mulligans

Instead of player A mulliganing repeatedly, and then player B doing so, player A says, "Oh, going to 6" and then play B says, "Yeah, me, too" and then player A can say, "...and down to five" and so on.

This is a good change. It'll speed up tournaments.

Terminology Changes

"In play" is now "The Battlefield," spells are "Cast" instead of "Played," activated abilities are "Activated" instead of "Played," "RFGed" becomes "Exile," and the beginning of the end of the turn is now explicitly labeled.

These are all good changes that will make the game easier to comprehend for new players. Witness the amount of confusion "playing" versus "putting into play" causes.

Mana Pools and Mana Burn

Mana Pools now empty at each phase (no floating mana from upkeep to draw) and there's no mana burn anymore.

Also a good change. Mana burn is usually inconsequential in gameplay terms, and it's yet another weird part of the game that ambushes new players. Clearing pools more often seems fine, too.

Token Ownership

If an effect puts tokens into play under your control, you now own them. Warp World decks now suck a lot more than they used to, for example.

This seems okay. Again, it'll help new players with the game. I'm a little sad to watch some Johnny opportunities go away with this change, but that's okay.

Combat Damage Doesn't Use the Stack

Oooh, this is a big one. Combat damage is now dealt as it's assigned. The upshot here is that you can no longer wait for damage to be assigned and then use some prevention effect. To deal with that, you now assign a priority among multiple blockers. Consider:

Progenitus attacks. I block (Edit: Yes, this doesn't work at all. Please pretend it's a random 10/10 instead. :) ) with a Cloudthresher, Kitchen Finks, and Wild Nacatl. Under current rules, I would say something like this:

"Assign 7 damage to Cloudthresher, and 3 damage to Kitchen Finks."

Under the new rules, I would say something like this:

"Order blockers as Cloudthresher, then Kitchen Finks, then Wild Nacatl."

This initially feels less elegant to me than damage using the stack. I'm not so fond of it. I mean, it's also an okay way for the game to work, so I'm cool with it, but I'm not excited about it.

That said, it does gain in elegance because it means you can literally line up the blocking cards in your priority order, which is easier to deal with than remembering where damage was assigned.

Edit: For a clear explanation of what I think is good and elegant about this change, and a combat example that works (no Progenitus!), click here.

Deathtouch Breaks the New Rule!

Of course, if you can't assign damage points, Death Touch doesn't work right. So, it lets you assign damage anyway. Woot.

Well, it had to be done to make it work.

Lifelink is Static

Likelink becomes a static ability, so the life gain happens immediately.

This is more intuitive for new players as well. I'm cool with it, and I've definitely seen Lifelink as a triggered ability screw up more than one new player.

Overall, I like the rules changes. They will help keep the rules from ambushing new players with nonintuitive features, and they don't screw up the game play. Good stuff.

Also, Aaron preview the new duals. More on that in the next post.

There you go.

In his first column discussing M2010, Aaron Forsythe said this about the new duals coming in M2010:

We wanted to make a cycle of powerful dual lands that risk-averse newer players would like, which meant coming up with something that didn't involve losing life.

This is sort of like a variation on Nimbus Maze, in that it keys off of land types. This is probably better overall than Nimbus Maze, as it's minimally a CIPT land even if you can't pull off the appropriate interaction.

However, my post title comes from the fact that these duals seem pretty exciting for the new fetch-free Extended that's coming up once Onslaught rotates out. Glacial Fortress, for example, can come into play untapped if you control a Hallowed Fountain, Godless Shrine, Temple Garden, Sacred Foundry, Breeding Pool, Steam Vents, or Watery Grave. Now, that is solidly nifty.

This also makes it look like I'm going to get a chance to design decks with my multi-color aesthetic, searching up Basic Lands and activating my M2010 duals, which is nice.

How much should these cost? Hard to say. I think they're okay, but they're not really shocks...

(Also, we don't yet know if we'll have five or ten of these.)

In recent Standard events, I've run Green/White and Black/Green/White big-dude aggro decks. Clearly, I've been interested in other concepts, but I think there's a solid possibility for something along these lines to do well in an upcoming PTQ.

During the recent coverage for PT Honolulu, we saw B/G Elves sweep the LCQs. At the same time, a G/W deck did reasonably well in block itself, which spurred BDM to mention a Tsuyoshi Fujita quote in a deck tech. Paraphrased, it says that playing two colors is a solid choice in a three-color environment, because you'll win a notable percentage of games on opponent's mana stumbles. Now, whether this applies in a land of Vivids and Pools is unclear, but I have nonetheless decided to take a look at two-color archetypes in contemporary Standard (despite my continuous desire to splash Maelstrom Pulses into everything).

Click through to the extended entry for a G/W big-dudes aggro deck that's been refined to fit my perceived version of the potential metagame.

Since the announcement of the coming rules changes in M2010, there has been the most wigging out about the changes to combat. A lot of the complaints come from the idea that putting damage on the stack is an integral concept, that removing it makes for dumber game play, and that players will need to learn what the stack is eventually anyway.

Well, yes they will, but from my own perspective of having taken a ten-year hiatus from the game (1996-2006, give or take), "damage on" is hardly integral to what makes Magic Magic. More to the point, I think the big gain here vis-a-vis new players has nothing to do with the stack or no, but in making invisible information visible.

More on that (with pictures!) in the extended entry. Go take a look!

Reposting with permission from his Facebook page, here's Zac Hill's nice take on why the current combat rules are counter-intuitive:

Basically: That the existing combat damage rules, although we've gotten used to them, are counter-intuitive beyond belief. So my guy and this other guy stab each other in the heart with some spears, but before either one of us dies, we're like "WHOA WHOA WHOA WAIT A SEC CHILL GUYS CHILL" while our homeboy-wizard-dude sets about casting some shit at his convenience? It just makes no sense. Plus, trying to explain deathtouch interactions to new players, or killing 2/2s with Blinking Spirit or whatever, always elicits these huge I-don't-understand groans. Because how can two guys deal damage simultaneously, yet one gets hit and the other doesn't?

Remember, Mogg Fanatic won a Pro Tour in pre-6th edition rules. Some cards get better, some get worse, but it's not like there's going to be all these huge huge huge power-level shakeups.

And you can read more about why I like this change in my previous post.

If I weren't out of town this weekend, I'd be there. Superstars is running a Standard $5K, and in a very cool new addition to their $5K procedure, they're having Josh Silvestri provide live coverage. Today is the main event, so there's a metagame breakdown and feature match coverage.

Click here to read the live $5K coverage at ChannelFireball.com

Three interesting recent articles:

Gary Wise discusses how many poker pros started in Magic

Josh Silvestri talks about Jund Aggro in Standard, with a solid meditation on the mana base

The Ferrett talks about how damage on the stack, really, honestly is a problem for recruiting new players

Amidst all the discussion about the combat changes in M2010, one of the big complaints has been that removing "damage on" devalues cards like Siege-Gang Commander and Sakura-Tribe Elder. The counter-argument, of course, is that many of these cards were good before damage ever found the stack (cf Mogg Fanatic), and that you actually pick up some interesting cost-benefit decisions now instead of the brain-dead "put damage on, sacrifice" before.

Patrick Chapin spoke about this in his most recent SCG article:

Under the old system, when a Savannah Lion attacks and I have a Sakura-Tribe Elder, there is only really one play. Block, damage on stack, sac. This is the same play that every “trick” revolves around. The correct play is 99.9% damage on the stack, do the trick. That is not strategic depth! You are not a good player because you know that you should always put damage on the stack then do the trick. You could teach a four-year old that!

Now there will be some tension. Do you kill the Lion or get the extra land? It may be an easy decision most of the time, but before the change it was never really a decision at all. If you are imaging all of the times you won’t be able to damage on the stack and sac anymore, just remember, your opponents will be in the same boat. The ADDED strategic depth will probably favor you because, if you are the type of player that reads StarCityGames.com, you are probably going to be favored in games that require real decision making. If you are imagining being the guy with the Sakura in this example, imagine it from the perspective of the guy with the Lion. Before, you could not attack. Now, you actually have a realistic option.

Humorously, one of the immediate replies in the forums was that Sakura-Tribe Elder will no longer see play.

I played four Elders in my deck in every single PTQ I played in during the most recent Extended season (the qualifiers for Honolulu). They blocked a lot. I don't think they ever killed anything, even once. They are, as someone ably put it in the forums, "a Rampant Growth that chump blocks." My crew of Elders stood valiantly and temporarily in the path of Nacatls, Figures, Tarmogoyfs, and many other creatures they couldn't kill, all while saving me 3-5 life and ramping me up to mass removal and Gifts mana.

I suppose I could have been lucky and killed a Confidant with an Elder, but no one ever offers that trade.

Some cards are "worse" now, and in ways that make me happy. Having Siege-Gang be an autopilot card isn't very interesting, and interesting decision points make for more entertaining game play.

Regardless, my Elders, in particular, are still going to keep doing the exact thing they've always been doing - chump blocking Rampant Growth FTW.

I've had a sort of on-again, off-again appreciation for Pithing Needle in the current Standard season. I ran two main deck at Regionals, and then stripped them out of the deck entirely for the following PTQ only to add them in on the day.

Pithing Needle is an interesting card. It's a generic solution to a swath of problems in Standard, but it's also often a terrible topdeck because you needed to do something other than shut down an activated ability to win the game. Still, there's a certain appeal to dropping a first-turn Needle on Windbrisk Heights against a tokens player (something I've done before).

So, with this little debate running in my head, let's take a look at the questions and possible answers over the in extended entry.

I'll be heading off to the second Northern California PTQ of the season tomorrow, a mere two hours away in Sacramento (at least it's not a busy drive when we get to start at 7am on a Saturday).

This weekend features ten PTQs worldwide.

In North America we have:

Little Rock, Arkansas
Sacramento, California
Denver, Colorado
Indianapolis, Indiana

All on the 20th.

In Japan we have two PTQs on the 21st, um...somewhere. I can't read Japanese.

In Europe there are two PTQs on the 20th:

Aachen, Germany
Hamburg, Germany

Finally, there are two PTQs in the Australia and New Zealand area, also both on the 20th:

Auckland, New Zealand
Perth, Australia

Looking at what I just wrote, I'm amused that in North America I'm listing cities and states, whereas in Europe and down south, I listed cities and countries. Of course, my state has more people than Australia and New Zealand combined, so maybe that's fair.

Good luck to everyone attending PTQs this weekend. If you haven't tried a PTQ before, I recommend giving it a go (and check out BDM's weekly column for some good advice from judges on what to do if you're attending your first PTQ).

In developing an appreciation for an idea, sometimes we want to factcheck ourselves to make sure that we are not in love with the idea beyond the point of reason, or, conversely, that we have not misapprehended the situation such that our good idea turns out to be, on the whole, bad. While I wouldn't advocate setting aside your creativity out of fear of having made a bad choice, I think it's good to be able to evaluate those situations where you have badly mismatched your choice to the event.

Or, to put it another way, 1-2-2.

Over in the extended entry, I'm going to take a look at a deck choice that turned out to be sorely mismatched for our area, and reflect on how it represents not just a mismatch, but also an incorrect approach to a core component of the game.

The Magic 2010 visual spoiler is up.

Lightning Bolt is confirmed. I am duly ambivalent. It's very pretty art.

I like the new black-blue dual (these new duals do a much better job of doing what I want a color-fixing land to do):

Just as I was considering my more-than-occasional error of generating and using decks that don't close, Zac Hill writes an excellent article distilling the fundamental issue that underlies this problem.

How to Break a Format with Two Easy Questions, by Zac Hill.

The blog was having some issues over the past week, but should be back up and running now. I'll probably make some incidental comments on the spoiled M10 cards in the near future, and I have a cascade control deck list I've been enjoying, for anyone who still has a pre-M10 PTQ coming up (or an FNM, if your FNMs are Standard).

With the set almost completely (if not necessarily reliably at all times - where'd that Lotus land go, eh?) spoiled, I'm definitely thinking about what I like in M2010. As a player who started in Beta, I think they've done a good job of cleaving more toward iconic, generic-and-cool fantasy elements for this new core set. The theming is stronger, there are fewer cards with random, hard-to-place names, and in general the set has more playables than we've come to expect from a core set.

I'll take a look at individual cards in the spoiler-rrific extended entry, specifically addressing rares that interest me, since, as always, I'll be buying a full common/uncommon 4x playset, and then picking out individual rares to purchase.

While my site has been down in the past week, I've been having a lot of fun with a cascade-centric control build. This design came about because I challenged myself to move away from the midrange, which is an area I've tended to live in lately. I intuitively appreciate the midrange because I like being able to shift modes between control and aggression, but I think being stuck in any one playstyle is (1) bad for my development and (2) kind of boring, whether I realize it or not. Thus, I decided to push myself in one direction or another, and the first place I went was control.

Cascade Pulse is a five-color control build that started as an attempt to merge planeswalker control with cascade control, with the idea that as many of the cards as possible should represent card advantage, either on the same turn or over time (I still love AJ Sacher's description of planeswalkers as epic spells that let you keep playing spells). What I ended up with is a control deck that leverages powerful card advantage to achieve control relatively quickly. It's good against a reasonably large swath of the field, and if I were heading off to a Standard event soon, I might tune this, concoct a metagame-appropriate sideboard, and bring it.

Click through to the extended entry for deck list and commentary.

Wizards has a buy a box promo offer for Magic 2010:

The first 20 people to purchase a Magic 2010 Core Set booster box at certain locations will get a foil alternate art Honor of the Pure promo card!

Click here to learn more and find a participating store near you.