Modern Witch-Maw Cascade

On Tuesday night I took a new deck to Double Midnight comics in Manchester, NH.  (First time there!)  The deck is WUBG and highly relies on the cascade mechanic.  Here's the list:

2 Plains

2 Swamp

5 Island
11 Forest

2 misty rainforest

1 verdant catacombs

1 windswept heath

4 Captured Sunlight

2 Early Harvest

2 Time warp

4 enlisted wurm

4 deny reality

1 enigma sphinx

4 urban evolution

2 harmonize

2 gaea's blessing

3 unexpected results

4 search for tomorrow

4 sakura-tribe elder

The basic plan is to stall/control with captured sunlight, sakura-tribe elder, deny reality, and time warp, get some enlisted wurm and enigma sphinx out, then keep swinging while taking lots of turns.  Taking lots of turns isn't too hard if the two gaea's blessings keep the deck cycling.  The time warps and other cascade/utility cards will keep coming back and you'll have plenty of land to keep doing things.

Land is one of the exciting things about this deck.  It's very easy on turn 7 to have 15 land on the board.  There's no Explore, but the Search for Tomorrow and Sakura-Tribe Elder will help get lots of stuff out.  And, since all the lands that stick around are basics, cascading into Early Harvest can double the length of an early turn.  Unexpected Results often really nice, and whenever I played it, my opponents were actually pretty excited to see what I'd get.

Here's how it went down.

Round 1: Bye.  Dang it!  Is my rating that low?  Matches: 1-0.

Round 2: I played Green (and Red?) Tron, which gets the Urza's lands going, and then drops big things.   In game 1, I ended it pretty early, using Deny Reality to keep the Urzatron offline.  I won with two Enlisted Wurms on the board and a Time Warp to hit for 20.  Game 2 and 3 didn't go my way, though, with Urzatron sticking around and him getting him the fat beats.  Emrakul killed me in game 3.  Oof.  Matches: 1-1, Games: 1-2

Round 3: Mono-green devotion/Genesis Wave had my number.  Ouch.  Two games quickly lost.  My opponent, Thomas, was really nice and we played a bunch of games afterwards with me running my Pyroclasm-Reckoner deck.  I won them all, but he kept really trying to take me down.  Matches: 1-2, Games: 1-4.

Round 4: I played against Mono-white Hate-bears.  Unfortunately, Leonin Arbiter is really good against all my fetching and Thalia is good against cascade.  I did manage to win game 2 by paying for the searching on an early arbiter, and quickly ramping up.  I couldn't keep up on game three, however.  Matches: 1-3, Games: 2-6.

Round 5 (final): I lost two straight games to UB mill.  I thought I'd be able to win easily due to Gaea's Blessing, but Nick was quick to Surgical Extraction those whenever I cast them.  I did not think that I would ever be missing Whirlpool Warrior.  I sided in two more blessings and 3 Serene Remebrances for game 2, but his sided Leyline of the Void was too much.  Drat!  I really thought I could pull that one off.  Matches: 1-4, Games: 2-8.

The deck didn't fare as well as I'd hoped.  The big problem is a lesson I haven't learned since playing a deck based around Time Stretch and Gurzigost at the Boston Regionals in 2003: taking lots of turns isn't a great win condition.  This deck would probably be a lot better if the Time Warps were replaced with Bribery or something.  Still, this deck is a lot of fun, and it was great to get a bunch of attention when the cascades started to go off.

Planewalker Assassins

About a month ago we played a nice variant: Assassins.  We had seven, which worked out to be a good number for this format.

The rules we used are very close to those laid out in this article, with a few major changes:

• Players may target whomever they wish with spells and abilities.
• When one player kills another, they take their victim's card, getting a new target.
• Players may only attack their target.  If they have their own name, they instead may attack anyone.

The only downside is the time.  We played one game which took us nearly 3 hours.  Definitely fun and definitely worth it, though!  This is my current favorite format for 7 people.  (I still prefer Cutthroat, 2HG, Cutthroat-Star, and Emperor for 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively.)

Cutthroat Magic

Cutthroat is a 3-player magic variant a friend taught to me that automatically extends to more-than-three variants, though it gets less fun if you have more than two opponents.

Basics

The basic rule is mostly simple: when you attack, you are attacking both opponents.  They may "combo-block" however they want (technically declaring assignments in turn order if it comes down to it) and any damage that goes through is dealt to both of them.  So, if I attack with three 1/1s, and my opponents each block one of them, then both players would take one damage.

That's it.  Targetted effects can still go in any direction (Disintegrate doesn't hit them both).  All players are considered each others' opponents for any other reason.

Details

Double-Damage?

Okay, so that's not all there is to it.  Ophidian-effects (Ninja of the Deep Hours, etc) and lifelink should only trigger once.

Unresolved question: Do prevention-effects stop the damage for one player?

Who can attack?

If a creature cannot attack one of the two players (e.g. Teferi's Moat) then that creature cannot attack anyone.

Who can block?

If one defending player cannot block a creature (e.g. landwalk) the other defender's creatures are still allowed to block that creature.


I'm sure there are other issues that would need to be ironed out.

Conspiracy Emperor Draft

Last week we did a Conspiracy Emperor Draft.  It was awesome.  I highly recommend this format.

One thing might have made it better: splashing some Khans of Tarkir packs in there along with the Conspiracy.

... or maybe including Planechase cards.

... or maybe drafting anaconda style.

... or maybe something totally different!

Either way, it was a blast!

A Limited EDH Attempt

Some friends and I decided to try an EDH draft yesterday.  Here's what we decided to do:

* Draft 3 packs as usual.

* Choose any creature you drafted to be your general.

* Include all cards legal with that general in your deck.  In other words, all cards that don't include colors or mana symbols not included in the general's colors and casting cost.  Draft some green cards you don't want to use?  Too bad; if your general is green then you have to include them.

* Each deck must have at least 40 cards.  (As with regular EDH, your general doesn't count as one of those cards.)

* Ignore the Highlander part of EDH; if you draft multiple copies of the same card, include all of them in the deck.

We wacky drafted this (meaning use any 3 packs you want).  Packs used included: Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Magic 2013, Avacyn Restored, Innistrad and Alara Reborn.

We then each built our deck and played three cutthroat EDH games.  I ran a Grixis Grimblade deck for games 1 and 2 and switched to Bloodbraid Elf for game 3.  Nathan's general was Bant Sureblade all three games.  Victor chose Sewn-Eye Drake to lead his army in game 1 and Esper Sojourners in games 2 and 3.  Victor wound up winning all three games!

Some interesting notes:

* Drafting a three-color creature was really vital, if only to make sure you have a deck with enough spells to fill out a deck.  In the last game my red-green deck had only 16 spells.  Oof. 

* I had to run Vampiric Fury even though I had no vampires.  :)

* Nathan had too many spells to stick to a 40-card deck.  I think he wound up with about 44.

* The drafting part was really complicated.  We allowed ourselves to review our previous picks at any time, which seems vital.  I was often conflicted about whether to choose cards to go with Bloodbraid Elf or Grixis Grimblade.  It was very tough.

* It was common to choose basic land over a spell to avoid taking something you did not want in your deck.

* Taking mono-colored creatures early on was good because they were more likely to fit in any deck (and creatures are good).

* 40 life per player may have been too much.

* Extort was way too powerful.  We had exactly one extort card between the three of us and it was a powerhouse.  This has been a problem with all multi-player limited formats I've seen, though.

* All three of us had a lot of fun!  We will definitely do this again!

Things I would like to change for the next attempt:

* Draft 4 packs instead of 3.  This might make it easier to play with 2-color generals (for those that don't have access to Alara-block packs).  It should also help give players more general options.

* Draft Anaconda style.  Want to change your entire strategy mid-pack?  Go for it!  Seriously, this sounds like a lot of fun.

* Lower the life point total to 30 or something like this.

* Lower the lethal general damage to 16 or something in that area.

Please let me know if you give this format a try or have ideas to improve it!

WittCon X Magic Results

WittCon X was a blast!  We had four different decks for our EDH tournament and seven different people show up for the sealed tournament.

In EDH: Darren ran a The Mimeoplasm deck; Victor played Doran, the Siege Tower; Aaron brought his Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck; and I used Radha, Heir to Keld.

Since there were four of us, we played rounds of 2HG.  We gave each team 60 life but ruled that 21 damage from any single commander was still enough to kill an entire team.  60 may have been too much life, but we were still able to finish three rounds (and nearly finish a fourth).

Aaron, apparently channeling this guy, managed to win each round, winning the tournament.

In the sealed tournament, Aaron again saw success and managed to go 5-1, losing only to Campbell.  His was the best record, meaning he won both tournaments that day.  This earned him two picks from the WittCon prize pile at the end of the convention. :)

Another great year in WittCon Magicking!  With any luck there'll be even more magic contestants next year!

WittCon X: March 23, 2013

WittCon X is coming to town in two months!

We're going to follow the usual pattern of doing the first session as a constructed event followed by a sealed event in the second session!  The first session is 10:30am to 2:30pm.  The second session is 2:45pm to 6:45pm.

Last year we had two people build decks for the constructed part of the tournament.  (Thanks, Aaron, for not leaving me in the dust!)  This year we're going to change it up a bit and make this an EDH/Commander tournament that way the decks are not just one-time deals.  I sincerely hope this will bring in more people!


We are still going to alter the play structure, however, so that the games are not just free-for-all chaos games.  We'll play a different format based on the number of people we have.  If we have

• 2 people, we'll just have duels.  Gosh, I hope this isn't the case!
• 3 people, we'll play 3-player cutthroat games.  This means that whenever you attack, you attack both opponents.  They can "team"-block as they see fit and whatever damage gets through is dealt to both of the defending players.  (For the purposes of cards like Scroll Thief and commander damage, the attacker chooses which opponent is actually being damaged.)
• 4 people, we'll play two-headed-giant (2HG) games.
• 5 people, we'll play cutthroat-star games.  In this variant of cutthroat (or variant of star) your two opponents are the players across from you.  If they die, you leave the game (on a positive note, having beaten them).
• 6 people, we'll either play emperor or cutthroat with three two-headed-giants.
• 7 people, we'll have one cutthroat game and one 2HG game going simultaneously.
• 8 people, we'll have two 2HG games simultaneously.
• 9 people, we'll have one 2HG game going and one star-cutthroat game.  (Or, possibly, three 3-player cutthroat games.
• 10 people, we'll have two cutthroat-star games.
• 11 people (I wish) we'll have one 5-player and one 6-player game going.
• 12 people (this will never happen) we'll have three 2HG games going.
• ... I'll make something up following a similar pattern.

I know this may not be as fun as your usual huge chaos game of Commander, but there are two very good reasons for doing this:

• we always try to mix it up... even more than usual for WittCon.  (Okay, this is a terrible reason.)
• It would be nice to play more than 1.7 rounds in 4 hours.

"How will scoring work?" you might be asking.  Very simple: outlast your opponents.  (Actively trying to kill them will help!)  Okay, so it's a bit more complicated.  There are three important parts to this:

• Base Points: Each round will be worth the same number of base points.  For example, if there is a star game, then whomever wins that round earns 4 points.  Whomever comes in second earns 3, then, 2, then 1, then 0.  (If two people tie, they split the points.  Thus, if they tie for second (and third) place, they split the 3+2 points so they each get 2.5.)  In a 2-team game (regular 2HG or duel), the winning team gets 1 point, the losing team gets 0.  With three teams (cutthroat) it's 2-1-0.  Not terribly complicated.
   
• Even-it-out Multiplier: "But what if there are uneven numbers, like with 7 people and we have one 2-team game and one 3-team game?"  That is the only sort of case where this part matters.  In one of those cases, you multiply your score by the maximum number of base points in the game you weren't a part of.  Thus, the players from the 2-team game would multiply their score by 3 and those from the 3-team game would multiply their score by 2.
   
• Round Multiplier: In order to make the latter rounds more exciting, those games will be worth more points.  For the first round, the multiplier will be 3.  For the second, the multiplier will be 4.  Then 5 and 6 (if we get that many rounds).  Just multiply that your score for the game by that multiplier and you've got it. :)

Examples!  If there are 5 total people and you come in (in this order): 2nd, 5th, 1st, then you get a total of: (3 x 3) + (0 x 4) + (4 x 5) = 29 points.  If there are 7 people and three rounds and you win the first 2HG then come in 2nd in the second cutthroat then win the third cutthroat, you get a total of: (1 x 2 x 3) + (1 x 1 x 4) + (2 x 1 x 5) = 20 points.  (These last ones are of the form (Base x "Even it out" x Round).)

We'll set up each round so that the players with highest current point totals are playing in the same game.

Important Question For You:

It would be great to keep these rounds to an hour each. What should the life-point totals be for multi-team games to make this a bit more reasonable?  Perhaps 26 life for a cutthroat game and 20 for star?  Let me know in the comments!

Final note: if you are coming please please please follow the deck construction rules for commander.  Seriously.  They might change between now and WittCon, so pay attention!

See you there! :)